Pros
Alta attracts a lot of bright and passionate people. Great mission and notable projects. Awesome benefits like wellness and bicycle benefits. Five-year travel stipend too though very few stick around that long.
Cons
Management is a mess: there is little transparency from the state of the company to changes in utilization targets to cryptic departures. Alta is very top heavy, yet there is little support or communication to junior-level staff. Many project managers and principals demonstrate a general lack of competence often mishandling project billing, going over budget, and overloading junior staff from lack of proper planning. Inappropriate and unprofessional behavior from senior-level staff: one C-level leader of the company threw objects around their office in a fit of anger in front of me. When I reported this to my supervisor, I was simply told this happens sometimes. No HR person there most of my tenure to report misconduct. One year the company-wide 'happy holidays' email left in an owner's disparaging notes about an office's poor utilization and announced layoffs. Little respect for staff: employees are overworked and under-appreciated. Promise of growth and training, as advertised in job postings and interviews, is not a reality. Lower than market salaries and demanding workloads. Requests for training sessions, support, and salary increases were ignored (not refused, but actually not responded to). LOTS of turnover. Lots of inefficiencies with work- junior level staff is often carrying a significant portion of project workload, even managing large projects, without the title/pay of the upper-level positions they are actually doing. Lots of redundancies and inefficiencies with project organization, expense reporting, project billing, and time reporting. Because of underestimated budgets and poor management, many hours working on projects are unbillable.
