Optimal Blue Reviews

3.7

64% would recommend to a friend

(70 total reviews)

Scott Happ

90% approve of CEO

69% positive business outlook

Optimal Blue has an employee rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars, based on 70 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Optimal Blue employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

70 reviews
1.0
23 June 2015

One-man show company

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Free soda, coffee machines, up to $12 lunch per week

Cons

- Uses VB6 kind of VB (not VB.NET) everywhere. - Only technology management decides what can be done and how can be done. - Use of WCF over traditional web services was discouraged because it is "too new" - One man show. Most code is done by the same few in modular manner such that VB classes are like in excess of 13000 lines of code. - No concept of object oriented analysis and design (OOAD) or OOP programming. - No concept of testing or proper software quality assurance (SQA) or verification and validation (V&V) - Extremely low employee retention ratio. - Unprofessional ethics from HR Department. They throw free food and soda to increase retention ratio - Typical scenario is that they hire internees to get the job done then show them doors. - Some tech staff has taken control of the company by using their own code snippets in secret places of which nobody else is aware and not willing to share with anyone

2.0
16 May 2016

On the bleeding edge of 2005 technology

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Free lunch every Friday -Free 15 minute back massages once a week -Amazing coffee -Average/Above average compensation

Cons

-Very outdated tech stack (WebForms, VB.NET) -Convoluted codebase. Classes are ridiculously long and are riddled with repetition and poor design. People are more likely to tack on another method that duplicated functionality found somewhere else than to actually consider standard OOP patterns. Except for a small handful, no one cares about code quality, testability, or maintenance. -Complete disregard for industry standards in favor of poor company-wide practices. -Company virtually refuses to adopt new technologies because of poisonous "If it's not broken, don't fix it" mentality. This does not work in tech. -Poor documentation and training. New employees face a "sink or swim" on-boarding process. Most sink due to the abysmal condition of the codebase. -The design of the legacy product is so counterintuitive that new clients have to undergo an extensive training just to get around the system for basic functionality. Features are added without much consideration for how it will impact the user experience. You can definitely tell that the product was "designed by engineers." If you work here for an extended period, unless you are mindful, you will pick up terrible code practices that are not applicable anywhere else. Your skills will atrophy. Beware.

1.0
24 Nov 2015

Overview of my experience

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Free lunch at least one day a week. -Casual Dress -Relaxing Environment

Cons

-I felt uncomfortable the whole time I was working there. -They were not upfront about the WHOLE job description and what it entails -After putting in my 2 weeks, my team treated me differently and my boss was completely rude. -When I would ask about being full-time, my boss would be dishonest about the process of moving up. -I didn't learn much from the position, I felt like a doormat, not respected.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 70 Reviews

Glassdoor has 76 Optimal Blue reviews submitted anonymously by Optimal Blue employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Optimal Blue is right for you.