CGI Project Management reviews

Ok, here the list is endless, so I have to try to summarize the principal ones. Foremost problem is upper and middle management. Unfortunately in this company you get promoted either out of seniority or out of your ability to do corridor talks and other chit-chat activities with people who have the power to promote. Competency is out of the picture. I have too many examples of this and my colleagues all agree. You at 50 y/o might end up having a 28 y/o manager who has done well her work in the company corridors and has stacked around long enough. Your manager will essentially be a HR function. He/she will not know much of what you do, only thing is to make sure all your hours are billable. When you get hired the hiring person will mention you paid overtime but, be forewarned, most managers do not approve any so that they can look good with their supervisor (remember: the ultimate objective is cost cutting here...). The ineptitude of management is chronical of the IT industry and CGI is no exception. However I also worked at IBM and management was more competent there. Here you get a bunch of HR people promoted to high profile positions who will never have a clue of your work challenges. Just note this: that there are VPs without a university degree! The pathetic focus for cost cutting shift the real focus on cutting waste. Since the management ability is what it is, they focus on the easiest thing to do: after all cutting expenses is much easier than cutting waste. Effort duplication is everywhere. Company politics and, again, management ineptitude, make any decision a drag. Everything takes forever. Obvious decisions cannot be taken fast because everybody has to be aware and agree. Believe me, for project managers this company is a nightmare. If you are a secretary or an HR person the company might be for you. Your chances to move ahead are as high as your ability to excel in corridors chat. Starting from a clerical position you can become a manager if you stick around for a while with the right people. What other company can offer you that?

Webster defines a bureaucrat as "an administrator concerned with procedural correctness at the expense of people's needs". This, in my view, accurately describes the CGI way of doing things. Management is obsessed with processes and if employees complies to the gazillion number of CGI processes. They don't care how you're actually doing, how you feel about your work, they simply want to do if you're a good soldier by acting and thinking like a CGI cardboard template. Focus is on process compliance. All the rest is in the background, including client satisfaction. I've rarely seen managers with so little insights about what's really going on. Even if you prompt a manager to "think", he/she (really many "she" lately) will react negatively by reminding you what this is the way things need to be done. Luckily enough for them, the competition is equally mediocre, at least in Canada, so they can get by this way... I also remark that the company pretends to have an "international" status but that is not true. Basically all the work force is in 3 countries, Canada, US, India. Some of the international offices are fake (i.e. Italy: there is no such office).