Sparq Reviews

2.6

37% would recommend to a friend

(334 total reviews)
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Monty P. Hamilton

39% approve of CEO

30% positive business outlook

Sparq has an employee rating of 2.6 out of 5 stars, based on 334 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Sparq employee rating is 32% below average for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

334 reviews
1.0
3 Mar 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

RSI is good at hiring good people, though it isn't able to keep them. I made life-long friends at RSI, and for that I'm grateful. RSI can be a flexible, nice place to work, so I'll put it as a pro here, but you'll see the exact opposite statement in the cons due to how RSI is structured. RSI has a small and unimpressive amount of PTO compared to many other software companies in general, but compared to other companies in the locations they have offices in it's generally fine. The OKC office was started relatively recently and started with a very strong and inclusive cultural foundation. RSI does provide end of year bonuses.

Cons

I'm going to start off with the quick and easy issues first and go into the worst stuff at the end. I was in the OKC office. Terrible benefits. The healthcare premiums aren't as expensive as some other companies, but they fall short compared to many others. The real downside is how bad the healthcare plan is - high copays, high deductibles, constant issues with denied coverage. Anthem is well known as a bad health insurance company, so RSI's choice to go with them is disappointing. No 401k match either. You might get ~1% if you're lucky due to profit sharing. So RSI might give you less of a 401k match than most other companies provide in their base compensation package. RSI does give end of year bonuses, which is nice, but the bonus is more opinion based than anything else, and seems to be down to a single person. This is true for promotions as well. I know several extremely deserving people who were passed up for promotion, and one I was directly involved with. I along with several other people fought for months to get this person promoted, just for them to be passed up when the time came, since the DCD (Development Center Directory) has complete power over who does and doesn't get promoted - and the arguments of this person's manager, PM, tech leads, etc. didn't matter to the DCD. RSI does not make up for bad benefits with higher salaries, they generally pay lower than the average for OKC (but I don't know about the other centers). RSI's model is to operation in low cost of living areas as a cost saving endeavor, and they supplement that with low salaries. RSI doesn't trust its employees with basic things like admin rights on their own work laptops. This is a software engineering and development company that doesn't allow its engineers access to their own machines. I have never worked at another company that operates like this, and never will again. RSI is strongly against working from home. They offer WFH has a benefit that you can have and use, and the executives and management tell you to just not worry about it and use WFH however much you need as long as you're reasonable. But the policy in place is very limited at 12 WFH days / year. You can't do things like WFH every Friday or for extended periods of time. You can't work remotely either. This is a company built on the idea of not having to choose "vocation over location", but working remotely is out of the question. They justify this with an out-of-date understanding of how software engineering teams operate regarding inter-team communication. To make matters worse, teams at RSI operate as remote teams for the client, so not allowing people to work remotely makes no sense at all in context. Everything above has contributed to the OKC office's very high turnover and attrition rate lately, but I don't think any of them are the biggest issues. The biggest issue by far is the culture. RSI does not allow for any career progression. Promotions are stingy and come with the problems I mentioned above. Due to the nature of the kind of work RSI does as a consulting firm, every project I saw at RSI was done wrong. The architecture was wrong, or the code was bad, or they weren't writing tests right, or the project structure was wrong. But RSI is focused on delivering to the client whatever the client wants, rather than doing it right. Most clients come with a ton of baggage and the RSI sales team happily accepts that and moves on, while the engineering teams have to actually deal with it. This can be good for learning opportunities for people new to the industry, but it makes for a bad place to work at. There is also a huge amount of unnecessary overhead when it comes to employee management. Any given person has a DCD, manager, tech lead, and a PM, all of whom expect personal updates on what everyone is doing at all times. Communication at RSI is extremely inefficient because of this, to the detriment of the employees. The OKC office's culture is constantly under attack by micromanaging PMs. There are several in the office in particular that want control over everything to do with the office and the office culture. They are subtle, but they attack specific people they don't like and manipulate management into thinking these people are underperforming, even though they have no evidence to support these claims. The biggest thing they actually do in the office is watch the clock to spot people who came in late, instead of focusing on their own jobs and realizing that other people have their own lives. This is particularly egregious considering everyone at RSI is a salaried employee. Many of these PMs also leave early most days and often don't work Fridays. Depending on the PM you get for your project RSI can be a very flexible and nice place to work, or a very strict count-your-hours job with no flexibility at all. It is extremely volatile as RSI doesn't actually have any hard rules about what can and can't be demanded of employees, so PMs are free to be as strict and unreasonable as they like, even though that does nothing but demoralize the office and make people work significantly less efficiently. The biggest issue is that executive management is either complicit or unaware of the issues in the OKC office. Based what management told us many times they seemed to be aware of the issues, and even mentioned some people who were being particularly problematic a couple times, but they have never done anything to fix these issues or disciplined those people to get them to stop being such a drag on the office culture. Most people in the office would agree that the executives are great people with great views on the company, but none of it really matters when the DCD has full control over everything that happens in any particular office. The OKC office has been mismanaged so badly from the past few months to the past year - and the office culture trouble-makers I discussed above have been allowed to run rampant for all this time - that the OKC office has not been able to hire people as quickly as people are leaving. Every month more people leave, because at the end of the day RSI OKC is not a good place to work at anymore. The cultural foundation that made the OKC office such a great place to work at a year ago just isn't there anymore.

1.0
5 Feb 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Still allows for remote work

Cons

Oh, Sparq, you magnificent dumpster fire of a company. If there were an olympic event for "corporate self-sabotage," you'd not only win gold but also trip over the podium, lose the medal, and then blame the intern. Let's start with management. Calling it "poor" would be an insult to poorly run lemonade stands. Decisions seem to be made by a magic 8-ball that's stuck on "Reply hazy, try again". The company is visionary - if your vision is a blurry, half-baked power point slide from 2003 titled "Synergy or Bust". The only thing they're innovating is new ways to confuse their employees and alienate their customers. They treat their values like a buffet: pick what you like, ignore the rest. Integrity? When it's convenient. Innovation? Sure, if by innovation you mean recycling bad ideas from the 90s and hoping no one notices. Inclusivity? They've mastered the art of including everyone in their collective misery. Employees are overworked, underpaid, and constantly gaslit into believing that this is the year things will turn around. (Spoiler: it's not.). Sparq isn't just a company; it's a cautionary tale. A masterclass in how to take a promising idea, douse it in poor leadership, and set it ablaze with bad decisions. If you're thinking of working here, don't. And if you're already here? Update your resume and pray for a swift exit strategy.

2.0
8 Sept 2016

Great Start, No Future.

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

RSI has a few upsides for itself. There are tons of great co-workers. A lot of times it does feel like you're going to work with some of you buddies. There is a lot in common between everyone since everyone has roughly the same hobbies. In addition, RSI does have some really great clients. Clients that respect the amount of effort we put forth in order support their needs. The clients provide a great learning experience for new programmers or anyone out of college.

Cons

Sadly, the Con's out way the Pros in the long run. Most issues stem from corporate's mis-management. RSI has multiple "core values" that we are supposed to adhere too. One, is "Do the right thing", which management doesn't do. I've seen multiple times were RSI has out right lied to its clients about the abilities of its staff. RSI is willing to tell a client that its employees have multiple years of experience, when in reality they just started. In addition, RSI is willing to tell its clients that it has experts in certain languages when the people on the team only just heard of it. Also, RSI is willing to throw teams under the bus in order to cover for upper management. Another Con is that RSI is extremely reactive when it comes to training its employees on new technology. Instead of keeping up to date on new tech and making sure its employees are ahead of the curve. The company will only start training its employees if a client suggests it or they need it for a sale. Additionally, RSI has no desire to maintain its talent. The business model is set up to churn through lots of fresh college students. When good talent, that is on good terms with management, wants to leave, its extremely rare for RSI to fight to keep that person. The pay and the raises are easily some of the lowest in the area for a tech field. This causes people to only stay for a few years before moving on.

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