Pros
Decent benefits, although I've had much better. They're working with some cool tech, it just doesn't work very often.
Kontras
The most common reason an employee leaves a position is the relationship they have with their manager. That was true for me as well at Alert Innovation. While a nice person, she is very ambitious, perhaps too much so. One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen managers make is to manage up (worry about the bosses above) rather than manage down (worry about the workers, keep them happy). I was working lots of extra hours, and I told her so, and yet she kept pushing me to get things done sooner. A good manager, if they know their people are already working hard, will let the person know about the pressure above without pushing even more on the worker who’s already tired and stressed. One had only to look around Alert to see the effects of pushing software too soon, and cutting corners. There was bad software all over the place. Yet still she pushed. Quite a few times she upset me so much I almost quit. I stuck it out as long as I could; the final straw came when she implied she couldn’t trust me to work as diligently at home as I would in the office. There were so many nights when my name had the only green dot in Slack, she should have had NO doubts about my work ethic. But there were a lot of other issues, too. As I referenced above, the software being produced was buggy, to the point that from run to run it wouldn’t behave the same way twice very often. It often failed in different ways, making it really hard to figure out where the problem was. On top of that, there were a number of times it just fell over and died, without even coming all the way up first. In the time I was there, I never saw them hit a deadline. I became convinced that they were unlikely to hit deadlines in the future as well, which became another reason I left. The infrastructure, the most basic functions of a high tech company, got worse during my tenure. Things were constantly breaking, and it got worse while I was there. The last week the VPN was dropping me after I’d connected for 60 seconds. Every. Single. Time. I notified OPS, and didn’t hear back before I left. I heard and saw the best people leaving. Around the time that I left, it seemed to be accelerating. I saw mismanagement at all levels. I saw the high level managers of software in meetings they should not have been in (reviewing code not even in the actual product!). They loved meetings there, it felt at times like I was the only person who was really trying to get something accomplished. The final item which convinced me to leave was the leadership at Alert, or lack thereof. In the fall of 2021 they mandated that everyone be in the office for 3 days a week, and the SAME 3 days. It was a move of desperation, they simply hoped that having people in the office together would help us hit deadlines (hoping for random synergy and conversations). I saw no evidence that it helped, as I said things got worse the longer I was there. But I know it hurt in many ways. First, people were getting sick left and right, doesn’t matter if it was COVID or some cold, it still hurts productivity. Second, I was told in the exit interview that quite a few folks named the mandate as one of the reasons they were leaving. And third, it really hurt the pool of candidates that we could get to interview; the best people didn’t even want to interview there. For myself, I decided that “leadership” that put the health of their company above the health of its employees, including me, didn’t deserve my hard work. I understand they were faced with a hard problem. But good leadership just doesn’t put its employees at risk. Lots of companies are doing hard things, and very few are mandating employees be in the office. Exceptional leadership would say, “Okay, we have this problem, how can we solve it without putting people at risk? Let’s brainstorm.” Going back to something that used to work (people in the office), that’s looking backward. I prefer leadership that looks forward and truly innovates. The management team at Alert seemed incapable of that. I had a Zoom meeting with someone in HR, which left me appalled that this person was allowed to be in HR at all, never mind at the top level. Let’s just say this person said some things which showed incredible insensitivity. Oh, and in the exit interview they promised me health insurance for 2 weeks after my last day, however someone canceled it BEFORE my last day! There may well be competent people working at Alert, I just didn’t see any evidence of it. I spent 3 months cleaning up that mess. Quitting Alert was one of the VERY BEST things I’ve *EVER* done for myself, period. I’m a much happier person. Run, don’t walk, away from Alert Innovation.
