The Mine Software Developer reviews

This review is from my stand point as a Software Engineer from ATG Stores (which later fully transited into Lowe's): First, let's talk about their promises: - We were promised and hinted that we would have our salary adjusted to the region standard on September 2015. It was never delivered. - We were then promised and hinted that we would have our salary adjusted to the region standard on March 2016, their normal review time. What they did was to give us a negligible raise (Let's say less than 3% on average. It is pretty pathetic for Software Engineer). - We were then promised and hinted that they are "working" on getting our salary adjusted on June 2016. What we got was another wave of laid off that severely hit the morale. - We were then promised that they would give us promotion in 6 months because they cannot fill in positions that just get laid off due to lawsuit. This is funny because after the recent wave of volunteer resignations (including me), they were somehow magically be able to create new positions to promote people into. Next, their other cons: - Opposed to their claim that they are agile, they indeed follow a top down command waterfall system that has long been obsolete. - Teams are moved around too much and too frequently that people never get the chance to settle down. - Some very capable engineers are stuck with the title of "IT Specialist", an extremely disrespectful Title that Lowe's created out of nowhere. - Obsolete release management process that requires both Engineers and QA to stay up late at night (usually from 8 pm to 2 am). To sum up, morale is at all time low because: - People are not getting paid what they deserved. - Full of politics. - Extremely disrespectful work title. I work as a SDE at Amazon now so I think that is enough to say for my ability.

AFTER all of the IT Dept at ATG Stores became Lowes Employees, month after month, slowly but surely Lowes people from Lowes Headquarters began either directly replacing upper management positions (rather than promoting senior level ATG people) and people who had been integral in the growth and success of ATG for the prior 10-15+ years before Lowes acquired it were laid off some other Lowes Headquarters people could be promoted (at least thats how it looked). More cons after Lowes Acquisition: - Major Levels of Bureaucracy and heaps of red tape became the norm for a Software Developer doing ANYTHING in the code; this went along with making ATG fall in line with the Lowes Development standards, which didn't seem to work that well. - ATG Stores company culture was slowly but surely suffocated by new Lowes managers stepping on everything (and accelerated the death of our culture after many really GREAT and PROMISING developers/QA people were laid off, myself included) - A Lowes manager who took over a few weeks earlier, decided without actually providing any evidence of said issue that my "skills were not up to the level that Lowes required", however, I was never given a software development aptitude test, my code was not reviewed by this manager and my Lead was deliberately kept OUT OF THE LOOP so they couldn't help clarify my skills... and I can only guess he *thought* he knew what my skills were by looking at my old crusty resume ATG Stores had on file from years before. Had he taken the time to test my skills or gosh even *RE-INTERVIEW ME FOR THE SAME POSITION* I am sure I would have been able to KEEP my job and prove myself. But i was given no such chance, just left on the cutting room floor. Such a shame.