First off, they lie to their new hires, or at least, they lied to me. I was told I would get a raise after the 3 months probation and sick days. After the probation was over, I was told no one in the company has any sick days at all, and that I "couldn't" get that raise because my evaluation was good, and it would need to excellent. Also, i was told there was a lot of room for growth, which from my pov there's close to none.
Company is well organized and mostly everyone is very friendly. However, there's close to zero training, or as the seniors like to joke about, the training is "trial by fire". There's close to zero documentation about the business rules and how the code works. Some stored procedure and classes are avoided being changed because no one knows for sure how they work. You are supposed to reverse engineer the code to understand how it works, because making too many questions may unplease certain people. Depending on their mood, you may be properly helped or just get a harsh explanation. This is related mostly to IRIS project, the one I worked at.
Lunch time is not paid, but you are supposed to attend to videos and meetings about the company during lunch time. Air conditioner barely works and some people buy fans to stand the heat.
You have free coffee and cereals everyday, and fruits every Monday. Employees share some beer on Friday, for which the company contributes with $20.
Team leads are allowed to eventually work from home, but not regular employees. There are no sick days at all; you or a relative get sick and you miss work, you won't get paid; at least for regular employees. You are required to dress formally; this is even one of the criteria for promotion. 2 weeks of vacation with no increase overtime. There's no incentive to learn or develop skills, related or not to your current tasks. Like once a month, there's a get together at some local pub or restaurant.
RH is usually frightening and stalks you at job portals. If you update your profile or resume even if that's routine for you, you can expect to be called out. That's possibly because they lose people almost every week to companies who provide better benefits and conditions. Also, you are required to have an "excellent" evaluation to get a raise, or even to keep your job. "Good" apparently isn't good at all. Also, they hire people who can't speak neither english or french, so you can see how good the RH department is.
A recent "anonymous" pool among employees indicated that 26% of all of them are currently looking for better jobs. A considerable number are unhappy, and the main reasons are the lack of communication from management and the poor salaries and benefits. Besides talking for weeks about how the company got 2 new big projects and that he plans to hire 2x more developers, CEO says he has no money for improving conditions for his current employees.
To finalize, it's a great temporary job for those looking to earn their initial experience or just looking patiently for a real permanent job.
On a side note, in my last weeks, I made public that my wife was pregnant. I had to attend to medical appointments with her, which they suspected to be job interviews. The fun thing is: not a single manager, team lead or member of the HR department congratulated me for this pregnancy; only my immediate circle of colleagues. I think that says a lot about how friendly and welcoming the work place is.
EDIT: 5 minutes after giving the company 1 star on google reviews, I was contacted by one their managers on linkedin who sent the following message: "Not sure why you are so mad at us buddy, but please be aware defamation is illegal in Canada." I guess that proves most of what I said in this review.
