A good place to start one's career, but that's about it
Pros
- You will have unlimited access to the on site gym which has quite a lot of decent equipment despite being fairly small. - Access to coffee, tea, as well as milk and cereal provided for by the company. On Fridays fresh rolls and sandwich meats etc. are available as well. - Access to bar where the fridge is stocked with beers. Some employees like to hang out here on a Friday after work. - Office is in the Southern Suburbs which is great if you live in the suburbs and don't like commuting into town every day. - You will likely be given a lot of responsibility quickly, which at least means that young grads who have never had a job before will learn a lot and fast. - Open Box employees have a reputation in Cape Town for being capable and hard working, this is because employees at Open Box are generally overworked and are given a lot more responsibility right out the gate than most companies and so you pretty much have to become a model employee to survive. There does seem to be a pretty good commitment to training employees to become highly competent and versatile. The problem is that there really isn't enough to keep you here once you've learned what you can. I would recommend fresh grads to work at Open Box to learn the industry the hard way, and then move on to green pastures when you start to burn out.
Cons
- Salaries are definitely not the worst, but they are not very good either. - The company has a fairly unhealthy work culture. You will likely be overworked, stressed, and expected to meet impossible deadlines. Free cereal and beers does not make up for this. - Most of the clients are American, which means that timezone differences will at times result in having to work at undesirable hours. - You will be expected to work more than your paid hours, and you will not be paid over time. You will be expected to be available to clients at all times, although you will not be paid for being on call. - Most of the code bases you will be working on are hopelessly out of date, and were never well written to start with. Most teams still follow a waterfall method, and do not work in sprints. - A lot of the benefits like the on site gym and bar are not really relevant anymore due to COVID, which makes the mediocre salaries harder to justify. - There does not seem to be a lot of opportunity for growth. A lot of the higher positions are occupied by people who were working at Open Box at the early days of the company and until they leave or retire those positions are not going to be available to more recent employees.
