The most miserable job of my entire career.
I know several other engineers and recruiters in the industry who have blacklisted Valtech after their own negative experiences with them. I just wish I'd heard that before I worked for them, I would have gone to a different company.
*In My Opinion*:
- nasty two faced English management (pretend to be nice initially, then stab you in the back at first opportunity)
- Toxic environment / culture / feeling
- dubious business practices (cannot specify due to NDA)
- religious about Agile
- Agile MicroManagement by inappropriate managers who know little about tech and just get in the way all the time every day, hassling you multiple times a day
- you're answering to people who are not at all qualified to be your boss and if the hiring was reversed would never come close to making the cut - my guess is because they're cheaper than good managers
- tonnes of meetings wasting your time
- cheaper less inexperienced employees than I would hire - I'm guessing to fill project seats and pocket more of the client's project money
- many consultancies often blag to clients to win contracts without having sufficient in-house skills and experience because they get less experienced employees, then try to figure it out on the job - dubbed "technical discovery" (a common known consultancy problem not unique to Valtech). My guess is this happened a lot here. IMO end clients need to interview and test every single person a consultancy sends otherwise it's like blind hiring at very expensive rates.
- many consultancies often pressure engineers in to Agile "show-and-tell" demos which result in rushed horribly hacked setups, accruing technical debt (not unique to Valtech - it's a common Agile problem)
- many consultancies often harass good engineers to automate everything asap so they can cut them and hand off to cheaper engineers (not unique to Valtech)
- coercion to sign a very restrictive NDA that was "missed" earlier by which point you can't say no because you'd be fired (I had to triple check the NDA before even putting my basic opinion on here it's that bad)
- visibly different ways they treat different people - it felt like they treat cheaper newcomers and long time employees with whom they have personal relationships nicely, but treat more expensive newcomers poorly, my guess is because they are reducing their margins as I've seen that elsewhere too
- I could list many shocking horror stories of ways I saw them treat people, but can't name specifics from inside the company due to NDA :-/ - only stuff people already know from outside observation
I've seen similar things from several other consultancies too, so it's not just Valtech. A lot of the issues are systemic to consultancies in general - the conflict of interest of inserting a consulting company in the middle that must be definition siphon off profits with opaque margins. Recruitment agencies by comparison have fixed transparent percentage margins so you are more likely to get higher quality engineers through them - agencies don't get to exert the same type of control on projects or do things I would consider unethical just to maximize profits.
I'm very dubious about any companies citing "Digital Transformation" or "Agile" after my experience here and seeing a few similar companies.
I've had experience with several other consultancies and in my experience Valtech was the worst, but not alone in many things I consider bad.
I now consider hiring consultancies to be something between professional negligence and straight up corruption (giving work due to pre-existing relationships). This seems to be the feedback from many other people I've asked across companies as to how these consultancies are getting work when so many experienced people consider them to be so terrible.
