Aquilent reviews

It's a body shop, however much they may argue that they are not. It's really odd: some positions are effectively permanent (some people are stuck on projects with no possibility of advancement for years), and yet others are never ending revolving doors. Overall, they almost never seem to promote from within so your ability to actually move up in any way beyond a simple title bump and maybe bringing in an extra 4-5k for it seems extremely limited. There's a huge degree of variability in how busy you will actually be as an employee: everyone seems to either be stuck in neutral or ramped up into high gear. This can be a very frustrating environment to work in, even when you are surrounded by good people. Management is poor, and the unstaffed HR of VP position for the last year has meant that resource management has been a complete joke. Part of the problem that they have with staffing positions, particularly development roles, is that there is actually no real understanding in management and HR as to the nuance of certain development tasks. Speaking as a developer, most of the work is pretty dull too: it's 90% WCMS work, usually in poorly maintained environments that require a lot of clean up, with all the frustration that comes with the very traditional "hurry up and wait" mentality that is endemic in government contracting. Seriously, developers: almost no one in this company really understands what you do. Most of your work will be things you probably could have been doing with your eyes closed 15 years ago. Some of their more interesting projects, they can't keep funded. Aquilent is also loathe to ever push back on a client request, which is a frustrating environment to work in when most of your client contact points are non technical people who have little understanding of what they are asking for. Aquilent can be a great place if you're on the right project (usually one that lets you stay in Laurel) for maybe 2 years, but I'm hardpressed to think of a reason even under the best of circumstances to stay longer than that. There are some really great people in important positions (PMs, tech leads), but by and large even they end up being really stymied by the fact that Aquilent is a bit cheap, and unwilling to push back on unreasonable client requests. The lack of advancement opportunities, and the complete lack of control you have as an employee over what sorts of projects you would like to work on means that you can very easily feel like little more than a line item on an account director's balance sheet, and you will be treated exactly like that. There's also a complete lack of company wide development standards. Big portions of your work will be devoted to cleaning up old code (some that Aquilent has written) because there is generally a very poor QA and testing process on most work. If you are looking for a shop that does test driven development, and really knows and emobides best practices as a whole, this is not it. For me personally, coming here has been probably a negative move for my career. I've been moved around more times than I care to think about in the last year and I've spent most of my time onboarding and offbaording projects rather than actually doing work. Generally, I feel like my skills have deteriorated, and certainly if I had known that this was 90% WCMS work, I would not have taken a job here. My interview was a little bit misleading (not intentionally so, it just feels that because almost no one who interviewed me knows about differences in types of development, that I got sold a bad bag of goods as a result), and this isn't unheard of. Aquilent does seem to have a reputation for hiring LAMP developers and then fitting them into boring WCMS cleanups in 15 year old content management systems. Developers be ware.

Job security, high turnover, inconsistent management styles and effectiveness, location (Laurel), management has no idea what development teams are up to, HR has no clue about how to retain or place people; they just rubber stamp the management power clique I was laid off due to lack of ANY Java (or any other) software development. The company is throwing a lot of effort into its cloud support, so it should be a good place for cloud system admins. It's also a good place for CMS and UX folks. But developers beware because it's slim (to no) pickings. Working at Aquilent is exciting in that it's a crap shoot – if you land a project that is interesting and lasts longer than six months, things are great. I learned a lot on the few good projects. More often, I was stuck with some lackluster project employing obsolete technology or put on the bench where you wait wondering if the company will find something for you to work on. My first project was a disaster; our prime basically “fired” Aquilent, although in all fairness, the prime was a joke, but you would think Aquilent would have vetted them a little better. It lasted a couple of months and then I was on the bench. Welcome to Aquilent! Then some decent and not so decent projects came along, culminating in a two year project that was great. (Two years is an extraordinarily long project for this company.) After busting my butt for two years, it ended and according to HR and upper management, all development work had dried up and I was back on the bench. I was told the bench was “strong” and not to worry. Then one day out of the blue, I was told to pack. First time I have been laid off in a long career. They have fairly aggressive schedules, which management likes to cloak as “agile”. All of Aquilent's contracts are with the government and we all know how agile the government is. Aquilent does not invest in its people. If they have a project for you, you are safe and everyone is happy. Otherwise, they let you go and with little notice. Doesn't seem to matter how long you have been with the company. Managers above line management need to be much more in touch with the people doing the actual work. Their only connection with the workers is through the almighty schedules. Company tries to be hip with hip parties and hip pool tables and hip “refresh” zones, but under the hip facade is another federal contractor that struggles finding it's niches and goes with what it thinks is the latest big wave (cloud) instead of sticking with tried and true development work.