Vantaggi
Recruitment will make you excited for the job.
Svantaggi
Short note to clients: People are not put onto projects based on experience. I have heard managers (yes, they have managers) brag about being able to switch positions/careers entirely and not start at “0”. The norm for Source Allies is for people to hop around between positions. HR, development, QA, project management. I thought this meant you can work under someone, learn a new career. It does not, it means you can do it, as a consultant, without experience and continue to work under the premise of being “experienced.” My initial problems with this company were the constant blatant insults towards clients. “They have no idea what they’re doing, this architecture is a mess!” “They use Redux? That’s stupid! Why?” There was a constant effort to rewrite everything clients did, argue with teams from other companies, and cause a big ruckus over nothing. The focus was never on getting the job done, it was about the more embedded engineers stroking their own egos. There’s never an effort to learn, or to really understand clients problems, there is only rewriting. LIke your typical arrogant junior developer that comes in, sees the codebase doesn’t look the same as the YouTube tutorials, and throws a fit out of fear. I saw, multiple times, SourceAllies engineers do exactly the opposite that clients asked them to for no other reason than to see if they could get away wit hit. It was embarrassing to work with some of these engineers who pretend to be professional. This behavior is actively encouraged and even taught in their “consulting” classes. Where you are taught to go into every conversation with an “agenda” (their word, not mine) and to make sure you control the conversation (their phrasing, not mine). Make sure that you control the outcome of the conversation. Two way conversations and learning from one another is actively discouraged. I remember telling a manager that someone who started with me was obviously not getting sleep and ranting to me about having to correct clients. “They should know better! They need to know I’m smarter than them!” This is an exact quote. This was not a normal way for this person to act when I met them. The manager I was talking to smiled and nodded at that before catching himself and starting the gaslighting, “Did you talk to them about why they’re saying those things?” This is the typical start of a way to redirect everything onto you instead of stopping and thinking about the actual problem. Prepare to spend an hour of getting redirected into a whirlwind of nothing if you ever bring up a serious issue with anyone. This will eventually end in some cultish recital of "the way we do things here!" For future employees: “Flat Org” is a lie. I feel like half the population can see the fact that any company which calls itself a “flat organization” is a red flag. For me, it was novel and curious. The idea that SourceAllies has no managers is an outright lie. They will struggle with this language in onboarding if you pay attention or ask enough questions. Just because they don’t use the word “manager” doesn’t mean there are no managers. Sometimes things like “the leadership” slip, and they know exactly who they are referring to. What this leads to is management via passive aggressiveness. People who can’t say they’re a manager, and will tell you they’re not a manager, but absolutely will tell you exactly what to do and make a very big vertical fuss if you don’t. They will even throw out bold-faced lies about how what they say is the “team decision.” Even when the entire team is disagreeing with them. It’s not that there aren’t managers, it’s that you have to figure out who your managers are by figuring out who is most aggressive about you taking exact instruction from them. Who will schedule a meeting if you do something in a slightly different way but get the same results. Who’s friends with whom? It is Game of Thrones for the workplace. If you are an experienced engineer getting your job done, expect a power hungry manager who has does not work with the code on a day to day and never will to go through your commits and tell you to add this line or that line whether it has an effect on the end product or not. Managers will also make up “requirements” as they go. They don’t have to come from clients, they don’t have to come from a team decision, the only thing that matters is that they come from a manager. They can be made up on the spot by someone who has no idea what they’re doing and thrust into the middle of your work. (And remember, there are no titles, but the person angrily telling you what to do… that’s the manager.) Cult Culture. Cult cultures are everywhere. They have been the norm for a decade. Participation in company events is more important than quality of work. Companies will try to take over all your time and make sure your identity is the company. SourceAllies is one of the worst examples of this. As managers are those most agreeable to the cult. They will even speak about “our founder” in soft tones. It’s enough to send a chill down your spine. It’s not uncommon to be pestered about attending some ridiculous event during your lunch hour or even worse, during off hours. Some of these can be fun, the majority of the time, they are awful. Managers will make sure to bother you, and ask why you’re not at every optional thing until you draw a very clear boundary. And once you do draw that boundary, you’re on the black list. Gaslighting/Cultish 1:1’s. In Scientology, members undergo an initial interview called “life history” which is a form of pastoral counseling. The real goal of this is to both collect dirt on you, and gaslight you into thinking like a cult member. SourceAllies is no different, except they do this regularly in the form of 1 on 1’s. It’s a very uncomfortable session of poking and prodding at every minor piece of drama to try to drum up real drama just so they can “correct” you and redirect you towards the cult. Many engineers have taken on the strategy of shut up, say nothing, you only have to deal with a few minutes of prodding and you can go about your day. A similar strategy that prisoners might take when being asked who started the riot. If you don’t keep your mouth shut during these, you will be forced down a path of gaslighting where every single word you say can and will be used against you. Got a problem with the way more experienced Source members are disrespectful towards clients? “Let’s talk about your consultant training.” These meetings are not for you, say nothing. Managers, but no management. At the end of the day, managers are really only there to serve their own power. I have had to work with two people, who at any other company, would have been fired a long time ago. Across 6 contracts and 2 full time jobs, I have never seen anything like this. People doing mass rewrites and breaking the codebase, or people who just don’t show up 50% of the time, freely acting with no consequence. The nice part about real managers is they can make the hard decisions to make sure the team can keep running smoothly. But because this is a cult, not a company, anyone close to management is immune to criticism. Breaking code? Directly going against client wishes? Creating extra work for the team? It doesn’t matter. As long as you cozy up to the cult, you don’t even have to show up to work. Work when you want. Take any day off, no excuse required, because there is no management, only managers. Forced Paired Programming. Most developers don’t like paired programming. Most developers at Source Allies will say privately they don’t like paired programming. But it is forced by managers to such an extent that no one wants to speak up. Just nod your head, go along, and there won’t be any trouble. This is an easy to solve problem by finding a buddy with which you can both agree you won’t be doing it. When a manager complains and threatens you because there’s no headphone icon in Slack (this does happen), just start a huddle and mute it. Ultimately SourceAllies will pull you into a cult and retrain you to think aggressively about any outside tribes. If this doesn’t vibe with you, if you have a life outside of Source and treating people with disrespect bothers you, you will not survive here. This was by far the worst job I have ever had, and the worst company I have ever worked for. And to think I took such a big pay cut to join this awful company.