Vantaggi
I came into Neumo from GovOS when the Merger happened. My position at GovOS/Neumo was my very first Corporate Job, which I started at 18 Years Old, and the experience was rather crazy in both positive and negative ways.
-At GovOS, the Compensation was rather Competitive. The Company is overall pretty chaotic and disorganized, but they did pay a fair amount.
As of the rise of Neumo, this has definitely changed, and they are definitely cutting as many corners as possible.
-I got to work on so many sides of the Company on a variety of different Projects simply because I wanted to. In some ways the lack of structure really allowed me to branch out and learn from a lot of people, including the Configuration Team, Implementation Team, and Engineering Team, even though I was just a Support Representative. Instead of being locked down to only answering Tickets, I got to contribute heavily to several Projects that needed lots of help.
-The Customers that we work with are great people once you get to understand them. Being able to work with these County Governments was a pure honor. They take their role of "Public Servant" very seriously, and getting to serve them is an incredibly rewarding experience. I was hired mainly to support Arlington County's Go-Live. This Project started out in horrible shape, and tensions were extremely high. Basically lots of promises were made in sales, but no one knew how to implement all that was contractually promised. Even though I was only responsible for "Support" (meaning helping with Printers, Scanners, and putting in Tickets), I really cared about Arlington County, and I took charge for the entire Project, went Onsite every day, and turned it around within 1 Month (16 Months into the Project). The fact that we went from the Customer yelling at us constantly, to them loving me and praising my name, that was one of the most powerful experiences of my life.
May the Arlington County Staff be infinitely blessed, they are great people, and I will really miss working with them.
-The "Veteran" (in the Trenches) Employees are awesome (basically anyone who came from GovOS's parent Company, "Kofile", in addition to most of the Engineers). They are extremely knowledgable, and they are always welcoming common sense eager learners on board to learn the Product.
They taught me so much, and I had a lot of great times working with them. If you ever join the Company, be sure to find these people, make friends with them, and help them out (they are a bit overworked because of their knowledge).
Svantaggi
-Very few people have the slightest idea what they are doing. Constantly people without any knowledge on the Products or Customers are driving completely impractical decisions despite having been constantly advised otherwise. Additionally, a lot of the work that is done is done really carelessly in a half-rear-ended manner. To the Customers, it is very obvious that the Company has no idea what it is doing, and as you work here, you gradually see it more and more in everything you do. Basically, we need people who are willing to learn the nature of this work, our Products, and our Customers, and make smart decisions based on real knowledge instead of empty promises made on very loose assumptions.
-Basically no one in the Company cares enough to move forward, innovate, or to even do things properly. Most of the people at GovOS/Neumo have sort of lost any hopes of trying to make the company or their lives better. Most likely because any attempt at innovation is either smacked down instantly, or if it does succeed, it gets replaced or overridden with a change in managers or systems. There are actually a lot of really good people with a lot of untapped intelligence and common sense, but they have lost any incentive to speak up or do anything new because the Company simply does not care. I was hoping to see this change with the rise of Neumo, with more innovation and streamlining of processes taking place, but ever since my departure, I have only heard that things have gotten worse.
-The Products are pretty clunky. Maybe back in 2015, these Products were considered cutting edge. But the improvement of these Products has stagnated, and they are now pretty outdated and incompetent. Despite this, Sales decides to market them as these amazing brand new cutting edge technologies, basically to a point that every single new Customer is disappointed with what they get. It works decently (when it works), but it is nothing amazing.
Additionally, most of the Newly made Products are pretty terrible. Overly simplified interfaces disempowering Customers, constantly broken buttons, constantly failing payments. To the point that no one ever wants to get involved with the new Products.
Hopefully they will gradually make them better over time, but I think even Neumo is rather disappointed with the Products they bought into with Avenue and GovOS.
-Projects are handled beyond horribly. You can count on every single Implementation being an absolute nightmare. Why? Primarily because of the weakness and incompetence of the organization described above. Slightly incompetent Products, unrealistic promises made in Sales, then poor Leadership in owning the work that needs to be done, and a lack of communication with the Customers on the fine details. If you deploy someone to the Customer sites in-person, they can communicate with the Customers, write out the necessary changes in detail, show the proposed change with the Customer to get their approval, then schedule each change request into a Sprint. By that process the Implementation can be done successfully (this is what I did for Arlington County). But for some reason, they prefer not to do that. They just like to scramble to get the bare minimum done a few weeks before the Customer is planned to Go-Live with the Product, and then resolve only 25% of the 1 Million problems later down the road.
We just need informed Implementation Leadership to put an organized process into place, and Implementations wouldn't be so terrible anymore.
-There is no such thing as a standard process. I was sort of shocked how absolutely nothing at GovOS/Neumo is written down. We repeatedly have simple problems with simple solutions, but every single time, everyone forgets everything from the past, and they scramble around for days like it is a brand new problem. This is one that can definitely be improved upon. If they were to write down and comply to Standard Operating Procedures for each scenario, things would be much more organized. But upon me having offered to make Standard Operating Procedures, no one was interested. I suppose they prefer going in circles and extending problems as long as possible since they are paid hourly.
Despite all of the downsides, my time here was actually really fun. These challenges really forced me to grow, and presented me with so many opportunities to make things better. When the bar is low, that is the perfect opportunity to give your best and raise the standard.
But the future for Neumo does not seem to be particularly bright, so I am glad that I got out when I did.