Very Chinese style office where the CEO interferes with everything beneath him. They like to big you up, promote you and then at the first opportunity they cut you down and blame you. The biggest thing that annoyed me about DrFirst was the blame culture. Any time there is a problem first they work out who to blame, and then what the consequences are - finally they look at how to solve it.
The IS group has to deal with customers and regularly filter this through to the IT department, yet the IT department does whatever the CEO feels is the right direction at the time. The guys in Sales are told that the volume of work able to be completed by the development teams does not affect the promises they make to clients, so the IS team frequently has to let down promises made as they were unrealistic when made.
The VP of Development (albeit a nice guy) has been over promoted to the point where the layer underneath run things without him knowing what is going on, but he is kept there through loyalty from the CEO. The CEO regularly gets angry and yells at everyone, then spends the next day apologizing. The Principal Architect is extremely technically sound, but they have made him into some sort of god in the eyes of the CEO, and he acts accordingly. They seem to have forgotten that he in no way can manage people or run projects.
They promote a 40 hour week, suggest 45-50 is normal, but most people work 60-70 and some way more than that. They have many offshore teams that work through the night so you have to quite often be awake at ridiculous hours to work both shifts, because the teams in India don't really look after themselves very well. People regularly have to work right through the night and people's health suffers as a result. Management would rather drive you into the ground and then just hire someone else rather than care about your well being.
Many of the staff are kept there by their visas, and in the past they have offered money for people to put favorable reviews on glass door. They frequently come around the office asking people to put up favorable reviews as they can't recruit people as word has spread.
Unfortunately I also experienced some "cultural problems", with misogynist and nepotistic attitudes from many of the middle managers, particularly those from India.
They also have no salary equalization at all - 2 people can sit next to each other one with double the salary of the other. It's all about threatening to leave then they give you more money. They have it as a fire-able offence if you disclose salary to another employee...!!
By far the worst place I've ever worked, but I now have some great people to have 'Ex DrFirst' meetups with.
