Uptake Software Engineer reviews

* unlimited Vacation - it is nice to have when you work there, but doesn't help you if the company decides to lay you off (like they recently laid off 51 people) or fire you with little to no cause. It doesn't accrue or payout so when you exit (by your own will or their's) you will realize it was set up that way to begin with. * Open office plan * Awful progress program - The performance review and progress program changed 4 times when I was there, and none of them were effective. * Pay will not increase, and you will almost certainly not be recognized for your contributions. You will hear during your performance review that "HR screwed up" or other excuses to not reward you even though you are an "A player", and exceeded all of your goals. You will not be promoted. * One of my managers who was there for almost a year and a half was fired at the end of the day by his boss, who called in remotely to do it. That is the kind of culture you get here. * Decisions are political instead of being data driven. You may find this surprising because this is supposed to be a data company with an "answers platform", but you at no point will you see any justification or data behind any decision. You will often have to do whatever the HiPPO (highest paid person's opinion) decides. * Lots of great people quitting or have quit * Weekly CEO emails are nonsensical. The CEO is detached from the day to day experience of employees. They attempt to inspire and motivate, but they come off as egotistical and cliché. The CEO has had a year of them put into a hardcover book titled "Sunday Thoughts" and littered them throughout the office. * The bureaucracy around acquiring anything is hair-pulling-out frustrating. You want to try a new piece of software for your team because the other internal version of software is either slow or always down? You have to spend 6 months going through acquisitions, security, engineering, to finally see it denied by a director in favor of "let's make the other one stable". You are better off just using it and not trying to follow the process. * Bad people are let go or reorganized into better positions - there have been multiple times when projects have been complete and utter failures by the same person, yet they are either promoted. * Dumb spending policies - ask for another laptop charger so you can work more at home after hours? Denied! According to the rules, it would cost too much money. At the same time, 16 60" HDTVs are bring installed into a wall down the hall, a podcast studio is being constructed, and a million dollar donation is being made to a prestigious University.

Where shall I start? No Core Working Product: Uptake is almost 3 years old but still has no stable, working product. We advertise ourselves as a SAAS company which provides a platform for predictive analysis but all we have is a web app which does not predict much. Hopefully, it will get better over time. No People With Experience: Uptake is a company with a lot of young people. They are all smart but lack experience. Software Engineers become managers in a span of 1 year. There is no proper Architect who oversees things in a project. There are a lot of smart people but not wise people. This led us to fail fast but the problem is we have failed at things so many times that we still do not have a stable product. This too will hopefully get better over time. Not able to hold on to Clients/ customers: Because of the sub-par product the customers are unhappy and eventually stop using Uptakes product. In this three years, many customers left and there is still no returning customers. A lot of bad Contractors: Uptake has hired a lot of incompetent Contractors who do not care about the product. They write bad code which leads to a lot of bugs. All they care about is showing how many stories they have finished so that they get a chance to convert to full time.