A joke of a company, with extra sprinkles of scamming - Anonymous employee Oktium Employee Review

Product, People, Values, Vision, and even Clients are extraordinary.

None. Except, occasionally a toxic employee who did not deliver what she/he was hired for leaves a review full of not only confidential information but outright lies. Oh, well... There are people like that and we are getting better at recognizing them from a mile away.

There are NONE! If I could I would give it ZERO stars!

On 11 November 2019, I applied to an advertised full-time React Front-End Engineer position posted by Oktium for a salary range of $30K - 54K with 0.1% - 0.5% equity on the AngelList site. I received an interview request from co-founder and CEO, Oldrich Matusek, within a couple of days, and we arranged an interview for 14 November 2019. Oldrich served as my recruiter and only point of contact, outside of those I was introduced to on Slack. On 20 November 2019, I received an offer for a two (2) month trial period, and if things went well, a permanent position as an independent contractor. Eager for the possibility to learn in a startup fully remote team environment as a front-end developer working with ReactJS, I decided to accept the offer. Despite the offer not being for a full-time salaried position with potential for equity as originally advertised on AngelList. On 20 November 2020, I received and responded to an email requesting my personal details. On 23 November 2020, I received an email asking me to sign and return the provided iShopping developer agreement. The developer agreement outlines very general duties ("Developer shall provide software planning, design, and development services to client."), time requirements ("Developer agrees to furnish client with development services as required by client and as mutually agreed upon in advance by the parties hereto") and compensation (The rate of pay is $3600/monthly) terms. Upon receiving the offer, I conducted my due diligence on the company in which I applied to Oktium and iShopping; or so I thought. There were no clear red flags or bad reviews. Oldrich expressed he was very eager to get me on-board immediately and asked me to start Friday, 22 November 2019. I indicated I could begin as early as the week of Thanksgiving, on 25 November 2019. Despite having previous family and holiday plans, I dropped everything to undertake this opportunity. I returned my signed developer agreement, believing that having an agreed-upon and signed contract would provide me with some security. On 25 November 2019, I received access to iShopping/Oktium's Slack, Apple Developer, email, and Bitbucket account. Later on 2 December 2019, I received the fully executed contract signed by both parties. I routinely worked more than forty (40) hours weekly, despite the Thanksgiving holiday, for close to a month. With the Christmas holiday approaching and unsure of the holiday plans for Oldrich or others, I inquired about the payroll process on 18 December 2019. On 19 December 2019, in response to my question, I received, "May I ask how you how do you see your performance?" After providing my answer, a conversation to change our arrangements by renegotiating my monthly rate was initiated by Oldrich, but never concluded despite my efforts. After submitting two different working solutions for my tasked VueJS project, a framework I had no previous experience with outside of this role. With no guidance or response to my request for information regarding the contracted monthly compensation, I submitted an invoice for my first employed month on 28 December 2019. I continued to work through the end of the month, despite the holiday, into January and the second month with receiving no response from Oldrich despite requesting guidance on the only other provided issued task. On the afternoon of 3 January 2020, Oldrich responded and notified me that my code was not usable, receiving my invoice made it even harder and that I did not deliver anything useful. Confused how two delivered working solutions could be viewed as unusable code or not "useful" when the feature did not previously exist. I replied to ask for clarification and to notify him that I respected his decision to part ways. In my response, I brought attention to the terms of our signed agreement, which he provided, regarding compensation and cancellation. In response to my message, on the evening of 3 January 2020, my access to iShopping/Oktium's Slack, Apple Developer, email, and Bitbucket account was deactivated. After sending an email with invoices for all six (6) weeks worked and communicating, my expectations of payment for the delivered services, especially during my holiday season. I finally received a response on 22 January 2020, in which he recommends I take this as a learning experience. He further warns that if I push the issue, it "will force us to countersuit you for damages we incurred and which are much higher than the amount you are claiming is due to you." iShopping/Oktium is not a reputable company. No one ethical should want to work for them or have any connection or association. They are taking advantage of and stealing from new developers in the tech community instead of trying to help the next generation, which is shameful. Companies like this should be banned from your AngelList platform to help protect the tech community from vultures like iShopping/Oktium, who are looking to get something for nothing.