Vantaggi
- Good health plan and coverage - Not very challenging if you want to cruise under the radar - Cream of the crop for Systems Integrators - Lot of travel opportunities - Company was bought out by Rockwell Automation
Svantaggi
- Compensation is a gray area. Company has "equal pay across equal positions", except for Texas because it is more "competitive". This is great if you work at the HQ in Columbia, this is terrible if you work in an area with a high cost of living. - 401K has a 4 year vesting period and <2 % match. They essentially lock you into Maverick for the next 4 years if you want whatever match you put in. - Turnover rate is extremely high. During my few years at the company, i saw an entire restructure of the team (only like 5 coworkers were from when I signed on). Management has the ideology that they can just replace their employees with new ones. - Microsoft Certifications are mandatory for the position despite having little to no .net work. A lot of employees put in extra time on their own to obtain these microsoft certifications and the company would not reimburse the extra $65 for the bundled package (test + retake). Without certifications, promotions are off the table. - MES Training is pointless and useless. Rarely were any of these MES packages utilized due to the nature of project work. - Management and Sales do not know how to execute MES jobs. Without understanding the complexity of the work, they throw out numbers and disregard estimates. Management and Sales operate under the idea that if it sounds simple, it should be simple (which is true for the Automation Services group, but not for software development). - Management does not understand the line of work and is unwilling to humble themselves in effort to learn the technologies the team is using. They will point fingers whenever convenient. - Work is not challenging and menial. A lot of projects are hacked together by people who don't know what they are doing. - Software developers are gaslighted with promises of grandeur and this idea of a legit development team. This comes down really to who is leading the project, but almost none of these projects have any time built into project management and improvement. - Very little mentorship. All enrichment activities were either self-motivated such as brown bag lunches or exam study sessions. Leadership rarely or never attends any of these. Little to no time is built into project work for mentoring junior resources. This leaves people out to sink or swim. - Despite being salaried, the company offers comp time at a rate of 50/50 until you reach a limit in the comp time bank. This is great if you intend to stay at the company for a long time, but there are certain caveats like you can't take it unless approved or have no work, and if you give 2-weeks notice, you immediately forfeit it despite it being forfeited on resignation. Other companies either give you straight overtime pay or don't force you into awkward situations. - No clear responsibilities. Project management handles finances for the project, tech lead is often overseeing project development and customer interactions, and junior developers are let loose without supervision. Team members throw around Scrum/Agile because it wants to be cutting edge, but ends up with "concurrent" and/or year-long sprints. - Gave 2-weeks notice and when I was done handing off all project and company materials a day early, they let me off a day early without pay. Shows that they are stingy and are not afraid to burn bridges. - Reprimanded for being able to multitask and look at bigger pictures such as which project should take precedence. Leadership has tunnel-vision in that they cannot see which company is worth more to the group down the line. They also let me go a day early because they would rather burn bridges instead of pay one extra day. - Company was bought out by Rockwell in 2016 and talk of fully integrating benefits alone won't be until 2019. Management takes forever to figure out something that shouldn't be all that hard. My suggestion is: - if you want to do legit software development, this place is not the place for you. If you want to cruise by with little to no skills, have remote flexibility, lots of travel opportunities, this is the place for you. - Relocate to a cheaper area of living and work there.