Company with outdated technology, overworked employees, and upper management that doesn't seem to care.
Pros
I enjoyed the people I worked with, the lower level employees were all very nice. The training was not bad. I was hired out of college, and went through a month of training. Considering it was a completely new programming language, spending a month learning it was helpful. Location is great. Nice building right off 75 in Richardson. Good cafe downstairs.
Cons
The technology (ADS code) is very outdated. It's also difficult to learn advanced methods behind it. The more experienced programmers within the company would leave once they realized that they could easily get more money to work elsewhere, on relevant programming languages that would help their career. ARGO seems to have a cycle....hire someone out of college for less money than IT software developers should be making (even for entry level), work them for 2-3 years, while giving them a very small payraise after a year or so, and then wait for them to leave. It didn't feel like they cared about the employees, it was cheaper to just hire new ones than to pay the knowledgeable ones to stay. So what ended up happening was a lot of people who had only been there 1-2 years ended up becoming the technical lead on a project, and things went downhill from there. The projects have project managers, but realistically the project is managed by the clients. When a clients wants something done within any time frame, upper management has no problem saying "Yes" and then overworking the employess. Forced overtime and weekends is not just a requirement here, but it's practically the norm. I had a stretch of 4 months where every developer on my project team was working during the week until 9-10pm, and then were required to come in both Saturday and Sunday to get work done. Again, ARGO doesn't care enough about the employees well being, so all of this overtime is unpaid with no compensation whatsoever. When the employees get sick of working so much OT, they quit...and ARGO hires college graduates to train and take their place. It's a bad cycle, but one that they use. I've been away from ARGO for a year, and I don't know anyone else who is still working there (I was there for 2 years and got to know a lot of people within the company). Everyone got fed up with being underpaid, overworked, and under appreciated. Trust me, if you can find a job elsewhere, do it. If not, then only plan on staying here for a year or two. If you stay longer, the ADS will kill your resume because you'll have programming experience in a language that is irrelevant and unknown to the real world.
