Decent gig for programmers with no experience
Pros
AmTrust is probably a good place to build a year or two of experience before getting a new job with higher pay at a more organized company. AmTrust is perfectly content with hiring developers with no skills and no experience and then assigning them to run the show on huge projects that would be a significant challenge even for the most seasoned developer. This operational "strategy" does yield some interesting opportunities for n00bs looking to build the old resume and learn a few things. Therefore, I can sincerely recommend this company for total n00bs. Also, since there are no code reviews, standards, etc. at AmTrust, this is a great place for subpar developers, slackers, and jaded dinosaurs to come and collect dust and paychecks with minimal fear of being exposed for what they are. So if you fall into any of those categories, definitely give this company a try as well. I will say that I did enjoy the companionship of most of the people with whom I worked at AmTrust and had some good times at the water cooler, going out for lunch, etc. I can't say that for every job I have had, so I'll mark that as a positive. I worked a reasonable 9-5 schedule pretty much every day, as I figured out after a year that working extra hard does not get you anywhere here, especially if you are not part of the post-work drinking crowd.
Cons
AmTrust is truly a "fly by the seat of your pants" organization, and this reality pervades all aspects of working as a developer at this company. Forget TDD, code reviews, unit testing, best practices, standards, conventions, etc. Throw all of that useless tripe out the window, for programming at AmTrust is all about bending over and taking it from the business on a daily basis while vomiting spaghetti code at ill-conceived intervals known as deadlines. Operating in this fashion is truly demoralizing if you care about the quality of your work. Projects are directed by "Business Analysts," which is, in many cases, quite the misnomer given the lack of analytical capability and business knowledge demonstrated by the holders of this title. So, in addition to coping with unrealistic deadlines, developers [who are usually n00bs] are expected to architect complicated systems from scratch as project requirements are presented in a piecemeal fashion by "Business Analysts." And the icing on the cake is that these requirements are often completely wrong or misleading and subject to sudden and inexplicable change. The end result is that the whole entire development process at AmTrust is a ludicrous proposition that could only seem realistic to a bean counter somewhere on the executive floor. As evinced by the rhetoric spewed by the CIO in one of the yearly IT peptalks, this is exactly the case. IT at AmTrust is all about keeping costs as low as possible while producing enough functioning infrastructure and software to prevent the entire company from going up in flames. The result is a disastrous codebase that induces feelings of panic, hysteria, and clinical depression in even the few battle-hardened senior developers who somehow work at this company in a sea of n00bs and hopelessly clueless BAs. Finally, there appears to be no hope of career advancement at AmTrust for most workers. Managers may dangle a carrot here and there, but when the winds of the business change direction, they are powerless and you may find yourself right back where you started on day one. Your best bet for a real promotion here is to be a blood relative of the CIO or a friend of a high-level executive.
