Terrible Work Environment - Software QA Analyst II Spectrum Employee Review

1) Terrible management: Management at Spectrum loves to Micromanage and hound the QA Testers. I often find myself busy answering questions regarding how testing is going that it causes delays in my ability to effectively test. In my opinion Management also way too concerned with metrics. As many Software QA Analysts are aware, we can often have issues with downtime due to various environmental issues that can either partially block or completely block testing. But our management does not care about this and wants you to still meet their KPI requirements regardless. This does not allow for any wiggle room when you cannot be as productive due to issues outside of your control. This point is not to say that Metrics should cannot be used, but rather that other variables should be considered as well. 2) No work life balance: Because of the above there is also no work life balance. With how management runs Spectrum many of the employees’ fear being laid off/fired. This has caused many in my team to pull 12+ hour shifts to remain "competitive". 3) Lack of proper compensation: As mentioned in the second paragraph many in my team are pulling long hours often working greater 50 hours in a week. For those of us that still work hourly rather than salary; we are not allowed to charge our overtime to the company. As we were told by management that Spectrum does not have the “budget” to pay us what we are owed; and for those of us that are contractors if we do charge the company overtime, we will then be compelled to take time off the following week. Thus, causing you to lose out on more of your base pay. 4) Lack of Training: When I first joined my team, I was literally handed a laptop and told to go find the documentation on the company shared drive to train myself on the various systems, software, processes, and acronyms of the company. When doing this many of the links that I found that would have been helpful either the document was long since deleted or the video training was corrupted and could no longer be watched. Resulting in me not actually understanding how I was expected to test their Mobile Software, and lots of frustration when it came time to test. Would the members of my team be willing to assist? Yes, many of them were more than willing to help. However, the need to constantly bug one of my coworkers is less than helpful and could be avoided if a base level of training was provided to get you up to speed on how Spectrum operates.