Negatives Far Outweigh the Positives - Development Team Lead bei Prometheus Group: Mitarbeiterbewertung

1. I would like to stress that it is your peers that you enjoy working with and not management. Management is choppy and unorganized, causing work to pile up on employees lower on the totem pole. As a developer, there were countless instances when sales or management decided on a deadline without taking into consideration the amount of development work that would go into it. 2. Deadlines are insanely tight. This was my first job out of college, and after interviewing at other places and asking about their release cycles, I found that even the smaller companies that were customer-driven had more structure than Prometheus Group. Prometheus Group rushes feature deadlines and forces poorly written code to be sent to customers. It's no surprise that this code comes back from the customer with angry, rightly deserved feedback, forcing developers to work hard again to resolve the bugs often within a week and send out another release. And another. And another, creating a code-base that is unmaintainable. This is the cycle that cannot be broken. If you are working at Prometheus Group currently and think that each bump in the road is few and far between, re-evaluate and ask yourself honestly if that is true. 3. Getting raises or moving up in the company is based on how driven you are to *drive yourself* into the ground. As someone who faked-it-til-you-make-it for two years, I can tell you that the only way to move up at the company is to say that you are money-driven and accept the golden handcuffs, be put on projects that are overtly stressful and on fire, and then once the project is slightly less on-fire, complain about the work that you had to do until the company silences your complaints with more money. I would not have stayed at the company if it wasn't for large bonuses and raises, the amounts of which some developers who had been at the company 4x as long as me had never seen, despite working their fair share of overtime as well. 4. Getting raises or moving up in the company is also correlated with how cozy you get to the CEO and how much of a "yes-man" you are willing to be. During the time when I was receiving raises or bonuses on a quarterly basis, I was often pulled into the CEOs office for chats to be groomed into a "leader". I understand that having talks with other leaders at the company would make sense if they want you to take on more responsibility and help guide you, but there was no guidance or training. The meetings often turned into personal discussions that stretched beyond work-related matters. As a female, I was told stories of other women that disappointed the CEO by not working hard enough or taking enough initiative, including a woman that quit her high position at a company, after making a lot of money, to be a housewife. I don't think it's appropriate to judge another person, in general, for their work-life decisions. Using an example of another woman to appeal to me and try to make me competitive against my own gender was tactless. Another offense was telling me to break up with my boyfriend, calling him a "trophy boyfriend", because he wasn't in as lucrative of a career as I was. Finally, I had made some t-shirts for some friends at the company; the CEO told me that by doing this I was putting myself in a subservient position and that I could have been using that time to be working harder for the company and as a leader. I found that these few things, among others, were extremely disrespectful to me and a failed attempt at manipulation. 5. If it wasn't clear from my above points, work-life balance is nonexistent at Prometheus Group. I was frequently pushed to my limit, mentally, in order to appease management and meet deadlines by working 60-70+ hour work weeks. I was acclimated to working between 45-50 hour work weeks, which I understand is common in tech. Employees are excluded from opportunities to move forward in the company if caught packing up at or around the time they are supposed to leave. If you are not working late, you are not an adequate employee. 6. The company does not trust it's employees and truly reared it's ugly face during the pandemic. Even before COVID-19, employees were not allowed to work from home. During the pandemic, the company was one of the last around to tell employees that they were allowed to work from home (it was encouraged to stay in the office) and within around two and a half months, began requiring employees to come back into the office in waves. Employees that refused to come back in were furloughed. In addition, the company awarded bonuses to those who voluntarily stayed in the office during the two and a half months prior mentioned. Now, there are confirmed COVID-19 cases in the office and no one is being told to WFH. I am friends with someone who came in contact with someone who tested positive and they were told to stay in the office despite the contact. In summary, I feel that the company is run in a negligent manner with no respect for its employees. Moving up in the company feels like being part of a secret club where employees are pitted against their peers because some have been deemed "leaders", either by overworking themselves or playing the game to please upper management. Those in the "leadership" positions will defend their positions because they have been groomed to believe they are superior to others, when merit is sometimes not a factor in their success. The company feels like a long, drawn out high school drama movie being watched by the CEO as he attempts, and often succeeds, at manipulating the people underneath him.