Management : The tendency is to distort the real situation and over-promise at the time of interview. Eventually recruits end up in support positions with a peripheral understanding of the product.
Work: The work largely consists of fixing bugs, mostly basic programming defects arising out of lack of due diligence, and maintenance comprising of small changes dictated by changing client requirements. A small amount of porting and integration work exists, for which there is heavy competition and is generally hard to come by . But surprisingly, performance reviews are done on the basis of actual coding done.
The product is messed up. Documentation is not encouraged citing deadlines and coding is done with a cavalier attitude to established coding principles . Multiple developers work on a single code fragment at the same time, heavily undermining the robustness and correctness of the code and leading to fatal blunders. Not a place for serious developers.
Performance: Wide disconnect between performance evaluation and work assignment. The management comes up with lame excuses to bring down the rating and progression of the employee citing reasons beyond the employee's control, like not having done some kind of work, whilst not assigning it in the first place and keeping it off-limits. Performance reviews are cover-up sessions for the manager's inefficiency, wherein the management tends to get personal with employees, blaming them for frivolous reasons improvised just for the sake of it. To lure the employee into sticking around for more time, assurances of career growth or salary in subsequent assessment cycles are made. These assurances, however, are seldom kept. A strong reason not to join.
Environment: Senior technical people are deeply entrenched, feel smug and do not share relevant information with new hires. Leads do not feel the need to explain their design to members of their teams and it is assumed that they will understand everything on their own.
Overall a place where being mediocre is the norm, and everyone else stands out. a professional nightmare and software engineering disaster . Best avoided like the plague.
