Trust me on this. Do not work here. I know you might be desperate. You might feel like you have no other option. But your sanity is worth more than Advicent will ever pay you. I believe that every person, regardless of your experience, can and will do better than working at this company.
Why you shouldn't work here:
- Pay is extremely low, lower than most tech jobs you'll find in Milwaukee. I had zero clue just how undervalued I was until I landed my next role. I tried to ask for raises but I was shot down for absurd reasons not related to performance.
- Performance reviews are fake. They are based on how close you are to being promoted due to years of experience, not on actual performance. Therefore, take performance reviews with a grain of salt. If you're still new, they'll have to make up reasons why you're performing 'poorly'. It also benefits their budget to say you aren't performing well because it means your bonus is lower. You can put in a lot of 60 hour weeks and still get a low performance score for nonsensical reasons because they don't want anyone getting a high bonus.
- Some managers do not need to be managers because they have no clue on how to be a manager. Instead, they try to live out what they think a manager is supposed to be and it often fails or makes you miserable. I don't necessarily blame the person who is the manager, but the company for putting that person in that position.
- Leadership blows every penny they have on the most unnecessary things possible because money burns their their pockets. Vanilla Ice, trips to the Caribbean, a hardly-used Collaboration Center, and prime seating at Summerfest are essential costs. Retaining customers and keeping essential devs employed is an unnecessary cost. I have a feeling based on all the victims of the Covid-19 layoff that leadership is trying to burn as much money on themselves before the company goes under. They did not take a salary cut or reduce benefits like most other tech companies did to avoid layoffs because they said (and I quote), "We work too hard." For a FinTech company, they don't actually understand how to be good stewards of their finances.
- Leadership has an extremely unclear and chaotic vision of what they want. Good luck being a dev, a designer, a product owner, or a business analyst and trying to figure out what they want. It seems to change with their mood. The company is extremely reactive to competitors but they're already five-to-ten years behind. It is too late to play catchup.
- Management doesn't listen to devs. I think other recent reviewers have covered this very well, but I am just emphasizing that it is, in fact, very true.
- The Open Door Policy is just fluff. It's not real. Don't ever expect to talk to anyone in leadership. If you get the chance, expect your questions to be answered with standard political non-answers.
- They tried to improve the company culture with a bunch of meaningless surveys, but the surveys obviously didn't touch on the actual problems. Instead, they identified supposed problems like "recognition" and fixed it with more fluff that doesn't address the problems. There was already a culture of recognition in the company with an award called an Aced-It, but I'm also convinced that the people who got the most Aced-Its were the ones laid off for some reason.
