Applied Systems reviews

Low pay, 10 vacation days per year, no RRSP match. Training is non-existent, watch and learn, mess up a few projects and learn things the hard way. No room for improvement, I have colleagues who are in the same role for more than 5 years with no promotion. Nothing to learn once you can do the job you are assigned to do. You don't need anything new to learn, let your brain rot. Culture is non existent. Bagels! That's what the company culture is built around. The Christmas parties are getting worse every year and you are not even allowed to bring your significant other to the party. This year's lunch BBQ was a shame. Procedures are changing every few weeks and you have to keep up with how-to docs put on random locations on the network, random updates that noone hears about and new instructions that you can't find anywhere except in an email someone sent a few weeks ago. I can't believe that as a tech company in the 21st century they are too cheap to buy some new hard drives for the shared space.

Compensation is really on the low side. When I received my first job offer it was 20% lower than my current salary. I quickly declined that offer but they countered with a more reasonable offer - still I got the feeling that low-balling salaries unless you pushed back was the M.O. (at least under the previous owner/management). Things seem to have improved since then but that's mostly hearsay. Vacation is also on the light side. You only get 2 weeks until you've been here for 5 years, then you go to 3 weeks. I was getting 25 days off at my previous job (6-year tenure) so that was a difficult adjustment. You can only roll over 1 week so it's difficult to build up a decent amount of time off for an extended trip.