Solution Design Group Reviews

- Don't fall for the hype; this is basically just an IT body shop with a slightly different operating model - Reviews are tilted positive bc they make everyone sign a comical document when they leave stating they or their children or heirs will never ever ever say anything bad about the company, so take them with a grain of salt…or a kilo - 401k match much lower compared to other companies - “Employee Owned” refers mostly to more senior folks & upper management. ESOP takes almost a decade to vest, so unless you stay that long you’re basically losing every year. Even after that I don’t think you’d ever catch up - Culture very cultish; there's definitely an in-group and everyone else. If you're not in the in-group it's very lonely and you feel like you could be fired at any moment for anything. Lots of suburban soccer mombies, so if that’s not your thing steer clear. - As others have mentioned DEI is pretty much lip service. They make sure to trot out their token diverse people at their events – corporate propaganda at its finest - Sometimes it feels like upper management still thinks everything is like it was in the 1980s... - High turnover and no common assignments, so you never know who you're going to be working with and rarely an opportunity to engage with them - Little support when things get tense or go awry at clients - don't expect your "manager" to actually go to bat for you - you are on your own and if you screw up you'll be shown the door (I’ve seen it happen too many times) - Basically no opportunity for advancement - Salaries significantly behind market (while senior management golfs constantly and drives nice new cars) - HR is woefully incompetent; doesn’t even know what to do with the most basic scenarios. I don’t even use my benefits half the time because I don’t trust them

Embarrassingly lacking in diversity on every front; not just on the programmer front. They signed the Minnesota Tech Diversity pledge and could definitely be credibly accused of it being lip service that they intended to not follow through on at all. I mean, just look at their photos. That said, they do have a lot of female employees but they, like most of the staff, are pretty close to entirely white with VERY few exceptions across the whole company. Other than that, one of the heads of the practices is one of the most pompous people I have ever met in my life, but there are at least a lot of kind and caring people around him who are aware and help smooth it over a bit. There are also some pretty long commutes sometimes and they have some pretty large clients that have some pretty antiquated social policies that they cater to instead of trying to influence.