Exodus Sweeping Company - Software Development Manager Solera Employee Review

This is not a rant, this is an honest warning to any people (engineers especially) looking to potentially work for this company. To start off, I had an upper-level position in the dev department so I had first-hand knowledge of many of the things that are going on at different levels of the company. AutoPoint is about two generations behind in the style of employee management they have adopted. We are talking 1950’s here folks. It can be summed up with something the CEO recently spoke directly to me in his weekly micro-management meetings, and I quote “Well, crack that whip!” The words expose the true feelings and perspective the CEO has towards the front lines. AutoPoint is the textbook example of killing the Golden Goose. Overworked (or expected to be) and highly underpaid and under-appreciated people are walking out their doors like the company is in an internal freefall. I was hoping to settle down and make a nice career with AutoPoint; but after months of seeing abuse and watching words of warning falling on deaf ears, no choice existed except to find a new home where skill and experience was valued and sought after. Consider this: I estimate about 75-80% of their entire SDLC positions has had turnover in the last 16 months! Think of all the IP that has walked out the door!! Management refuses to pay the price (and I’m not talking just dollar bills here) to create a truly competent team and environment where that team can thrive. Let’s just start with culture—oh wait, there isn’t one. The only culture that exists at AutoPoint is that of an infested pitri dish of a management full of nepotism and crony capitalists that lie and give lip service to cover their tales in hopes of not being discovered in their inability to add even a modicum of value. Believe me when I say, the company takes the minimalist amount of effort to keep up the appearance of a culture. Don’t expect company parties where family is invited (or parties in general), and certainly don’t expect a feeling of synergy with team members. Remember, culture failures come from the top down, it’s a precedent set from the top-level managers. The indoctrination is through the roof. Before you even sit down at your desk, a new hire would be rammed through two days of Solera (parent company) school where they teach you counter-intuitive and in some cases hypocritical concepts. Some of these concepts are valid and useful such as the 80/20 and 30/30 principles, but the amount of emphasis on them makes people sick to their stomach (just read any reviews on this site at random and you’ll see what I’m talking about). Additionally, these sayings are just that, sayings. Anytime I or others offered suggestions along the lines of these “company principles,” they were either ignored or flat out rejected. These sayings mean nothing; AutoPoint is great at punting and just kicking the can down the road. The status-quo ought not to be challenged. In one attempt to give honest and true feedback to what appeared to be a welcoming CEO, I was nearly fired because I supposedly threw someone close to him “under the bus”. I learned then and there that everything is just a dog and pony show put on for the cronies at Solera. Truth be told, if Solera’s head knew half of what I did, they might just come in with guns blazing; but there is no doubt some information intentionally sheltered from making its way up there (i.e. like how everyone is walking away). Employees are highly underpaid for their work—and AutoPoint knows this well. Largely, this is due to the parent company’s (Solera) near-oppressive mandates to it subordinate entities. AutoPoint, like other Solera subsidiaries, for all intents and purposes has no ability to act towards its own interests without approval from the top people in Solera. Raises, title changes, new hires, parties, trainings, you name it!! Everything is already budgeted for the entire year so adaptation to unpredictable circumstances during the fiscal year is basically an impossible feat. Getting a financial adjustment through the system is comparable to getting Washington DC to pass a law without pork and earmarks – just doesn’t happen. While the Human Resources team knows this they pretend to be on your side, giving enough lip service to put Milli Vanilli out of business faster than a scratch on a CD. I have never, in all my corporate days, met a mentality in HR that is so unconcerned with the state of morale of the employees of a company then I have with AutoPoint; this behavior, of course, contributes to the toxic culture that already exists.