Pros
Before I begin, It's important to give some context: • Optofidelity is owned by a Chinese investment company; the name escapes me. • Optofidelity is headquartered in Finland, with a subsidiary in the US. • There is also a China-based Optofidelity, but I don't know all the details of how it relates to the Finland/US side. • The CEO of the Finnish company is also the chief executive of the US subsidiary • In the US, Optofidelity employs people one of two ways: 1) as regular employees or 2) as contractors for other companies. I was regular employee in the US subsidiary, so this review will be focused on what it is like to work for Optofidelity as a regular employee in the US. • For transparency, I had been unhappy at my job almost a year before quitting. I had been particularly frustrated with the lack of transparency, career growth, and honesty from leadership. The final straw was when a higher-up did a series of unethical things in plain view of the leadership and no immediate rectifying actions were taken. This was the moment it became apparent that the leadership had been fully aware of the ongoing unethical behavior by higher-ups and to some extent condoned it. Here are the pros of working at Optofidelity in the US: • Above average PTO for a US company. The company has recently started unlimited PTO. My feelings are mixed about unlimited because there is more red tape to take time off compared to before. Regardless, it is still above average. • Interesting industry to work in. You get to have a role in the development of cutting edge AR/VR technology. • There are still many smart people at the company to learn from. • There are still many wonderful people at the company to build relationships with. • Hybrid, except for a lot of out-of-town work travel for regular employee engineers.
Cons
Here are the cons of working at Optofidelity in the US: • Pay is below average for area. • Long hours if you are traveling out-of-state a lot and/or have a lot of responsibilities • No job training, you are thrown into the thick of it immediately • A lot of the systems you are expected to bring up arrive to the US in poor state (unfinished, not working properly). As an engineer, you are pressured to fix them quickly, while placating angry customers. This is understandably stressful. • All the engineering jobs in the US, regardless of title, require you to provide and prioritize technical customer support to customers. I was lied to about my job duties during the interview process. • You are expected to travel out-of-town at a moments notice. You will be expected to pack your things and leave the next day. If you ask for more time to get ready you will get reprimanded. Remember that when leadership says they care about employee health and work-life balance. • I was very good at getting systems up and running. I had the shortest bring-up times and I also took on a lot of other roles in the company to solely to help the company as much as possible. My reward for my achievements and hard-work was getting passed on a raise while my coworkers got raises. • I showed good will by taking a lot out-of-town support work trips. Again I wanted to help the company as much as possible. My reward was management would always ask me to travel out-of-town, and getting reprimanded for asking for advanced notice. • In two years I never got a raise, not even to keep up with inflation • Leadership is dishonest. Leadership will not give you a straight answer about anything, whether it's raises, your career future, company financial situation. There is no transparency. Leadership has been caught telling flat out lies, they just lie more to cover their behinds. • At least some people in leadership expect you to go along with dishonest practices, and if you call them out or refuse to go along with it they will retaliate against you. The rest of leadership has been caught witnessing this and taking no immediate rectifying actions. • I had made some in leadership aware of dishonest practices and unethical behavior for MONTHS and has done nothing about it, even when they witnessed it themselves. • There have been some racially insensitive remarks made by some in leadership.