Lab49 reviews about "pay"

In the last year things in DC have really gone to hell. * They ask for 12 weeks notice in an offer letter and try to pressure you on it if you give less claiming the offer letter is a binding contract (it's not). * For employees that have given notice, some were fired after giving notice and not paid for the notice period. Why would anyone give any notice at all when there is a track record of firing employees that give notice???? * Employees that have left (both fired and quit) were not paid out in accordance with DC labor laws (they/I were paid, but not within the legally required time period). * Some newer projects are jQuery based applications. jQuery, in 2019!!!! * There are no longer company-wide high standards and it is now 100% dependent on the individual team lead--some are good and some are horrible. One lead is still great. * 100% of Lab49's HR is gone and it is all run by a new company that was bought out by the parent company (so it's not even the parent company's HR anymore). They are completely detached from Lab49 and barely even know Lab49 exists.

- We build enterprise software sometimes over multiple years, this might not be for everyone - There are the occasional late night but everyone has pride in their work so no big deal - Sometimes things happen at the mercy of our clients but this sometimes happens in consulting - Could do more talks in the community but getting sign off is tricky due to strict NDA's - Can't always use cutting edge languages and frameworks, they need to be stable / supported - We're still bound by investment banking level contract obligations, can sometimes get corporate

Lab49 is probably the worst company I have ever worked for. This review is probably pointless as there is little chance of Lab49 hiring again but just in case enough staff leave that they cannot service their current clients, read on. The worst traits of the company are secrecy, lies. and bullying. The upper management thrive on secrecy and seem to love to hide as much information as possible (mostly for no apparent reason). Any information that does come from management is probably a lie, again normally for no reason. The management is very hierarchical with board level, middle and regional. There are regional leadership teams that operate like the stasi, being instructed to keep the staff “on message” and reporting any deviation from expected (but not communicated) behaviour. Lab49 is losing customers as they treat them as cash cows. Lab49 never considers if they are helping their clients business, improving their systems or doing requested work efficiently. Lab49s main consideration is how to extract as much money as quickly as possible. Totally inappropriate staff are put on projects as they are seen as ambassadors (e.g. client-side JS dev put in server side java role because they are sales oriented rather than assigning a more suitable junior java dev). The deliveries are of very poor quality, are normally very late and over budget. Developers that go the extra mile for clients are publicly reprimanded - that extra work was potentially billable. Lab has lost most of its technical staff. The ones that are left are mostly sales people with a technical background. When the company was busy, they promoted the noisiest people to high levels and allowed them to experiment with whatever they had read in their favourite blogs. The designs were naive and unsuitable - as you would expect from a junior dev put in charge of their first project. Any criticism or suggestions for change was heavily, and normally publicly, squashed. This lead to very frustrated developers giving up and just doing what they were told until they found a proper job. The software finally delivered is of the lowest quality that I have seen in many years in the industry. Lab has found a way of making staff believe that although they are technically superior they will not be able to get a better paid job elsewhere. New comers (and customers) will quickly see the hubris displayed by longer term staff (2 or more years) and wonder how they came to consider themselves to be that good. The staff used to be generally above average but any talent has long gone and what is left is mostly poor. The wages used to be upper quartile but are lagging and are are barely above average now. There is always a better job than Lab49 elsewhere and many with better money too. For those that remain, the “leadership team” members have been promoted well above where they will be able to find work in another company (head of testing in with a team of one person - down from two?). The technical staff left need to find work with good technical leadership before they are totally unemployable. Lab49 attacks the authors of bad Glassdoor reviews by sending the lawyers in. Of course it is toothless but they have threatened withholding pay and taking people to court. They have succeeded in having reviews withdrawn. New staff are "highly encouraged" to quickly add positive reviews and HR staff have added positive reviews when bad reviews are posted. Many of the managers that created this mess have now fled the company. Unfortunately, the managers that are left are the former yes men of the “leadership teams” and are even less competent than their predecessors and are incredibly weak. They are coping by bullying and threatening their already demoralised staff. Lab is now in a predictable bad financial state. They have lost about two thirds of their staff in 2016 to redundancy and attrition. Many of those remaining are ‘on bench’. Bonuses for 2015 were only partly paid in 2016 (25% of awarded bonus) and there are no 2016 / 2017 bonuses, pay rises or promotions. Office space is being sub-let, kitchens not repaired or stocked, company events cancelled or self paid. An office has been opened in India to try to get cheap labour to back up the ‘sales developers’ working on client site but this has flopped with all the Indian staff being on bench for the year or so that they have been employed. The NY and washington offices are clinging onto their oldest clients, essentially just acting as a bodyshop for them. The London office has a fast diminishing client base and is small fraction of its size. Any regional offices have little or no paying work with the majority of staff on bench and hoping to be able to work on projects based in the NY or London office (normally at very unsociable hours). In summary, a bad company that has rotted almost to the point of disappearing. Unless your house is about to be repossessed, find work elsewhere.

It is now a place where mediocre talent is hired for slightly above-market pay, with a vague promise of a possible bonus (maybe), and then you are worked 60-80 hours with little to no thanks. The sales team looks at the technology team as a blunt tool that can be engaged at a moment's notice, with little feedback (let alone appreciation) with regard to their efforts. Management sees technology as fungible assets, because the projects in technology are mostly not that interesting anymore; single page applications that have little-to-no relationship with actual finance, building powerpoint presentations that are supposed to be compliance reports (yes, really), etc. You get to work with an ever rotating cast of off-shore "talent".

Performance/ pay review months late with 0 communication, senior managers still managed to agree promotions amongst themselves though.

- In 2015 ION Group acquired a majority ownership in the company and asserted a large amount of control over operations. Things have gone down hill rapidly since. See reviews of ION Trading, Triple Point Technology, Financial Software Systems, FFastFill, and Wall Street Systems (all other ION acquisitions) for whats in store. - Was a very high quality software shop, but since the ION changes, quality has dropped quickly and significantly over the past year. The goal is now just to get work out the door. Very little regard to quality at all. - We were paid only 30% of our 2015 bonuses, while the remaining is being witheld until later in the year, to be paid only if a specific number of off-shore employees are hired. Even the recruiting dept (whose responsibility it is to meet those goals) wasn't given a heads-up on this. - Executive team is not trustworthy. They tell half-trutths and lie often to woo and retain top talent, but can't follow through on anything (which is why the most talented people have left or are leaving). In the meantime, they can't figure out why their reviews are floundering (part of their onboarding process "requires" you to write a Glassdoor review, I guess in an attempt to inflate positive reviews while workers are still in that honeymoon phase). Quarterly Q&A meetings are supposed to be open to discussing the state of the company, but are really just a soapbox for management "assure" everyone that all is going just fine! The only real winners in this company are c-level execs and upper management, and they obviously aim to keep it that way. In the end, consider this a stepping stone at best. But with the market the way it is now there are so many companies that will treat you much better, especially in NYC, that it's hard to find a reason to bother.

- very poor communication top-down (non existent in fact) - company lies to it's employees promising no lay offs, where in fact they happen few weeks later - all the talent pretty much left the company - project architecture is not consistent, hasn't been proven to work, in fact it's known not to work due to some serious issues - everyone who's ever been their client no longer wants to do anything with them - one of the biggest clients they have pretty much hates the relationship they've built, which doesn't bold well for the future - don't get swayed by the bonuses as they don't exist - work/life balance is horrible; they will never personally ask you to stay after hours but will assign you with so much work it would be impossible to finish it on time and set the expectation bar really high, putting you into a corner where you feel like you have to stay making that decision yourself; then when prompted about doing "long hours" they conveniently say they never ask anyone to stay late; - there have been occasions where some of the senior staff would elevate their voice, not to say shout at you, if the work haven't been delivered on the deadline, which to begin with is ridiculous and undoable. And if you have had it and decide to leave, they will not release your references to potential new employers. What a shameful behaviour. Pretty much one of the worst experiences I've had in my career.