Spyder Trap Reviews

First and foremost... No paid vacation for 4th of July. We literally got an email from the CFO the week before citing a federal regulation that stated that they didn't have to give us a paid vacation day since 4th of July landed on a weekend. I have never worked for a professional company that didn't give the Friday before, or the Monday after on a federal holiday that landed on a weekend. Ridiculous. As I mentioned in my pros section, there are some cool spaces to work within the Spyder Trap office. That being said, the only time a developer can use one of those spaces is if 1) That developer is asked to come down to a space to work directly with a PM or a designer, or 2) That developer happens to be the manager of the developers... or the development manager's best friend. If you don't fall into one of those two categories you absolutely will be chastised by the development manager in a really passive aggressive manner. For example, you'll hear something like "You know, everyone else was upstairs for the last hour and you weren't there. That's really not fair to the rest of the team, but you know... you are allowed to work wherever you want, so I guess it's fine if that's what you want to do." The manager of the development team was consistently passive aggressive about these types of things. There was never a clear definition of what he did or didn't expect you to do. When I asked him why he couldn't just say "I prefer my team to sit upstairs at their desks." I was told "Well, I really don't like conflict, so I would rather you just figure out for yourself what I do or don't like." In my opinion, this is a ridiculous trait to have in one of your "managers". Another Con: When I was interviewed I made it clear that I was commuting from a neighboring state and that my commute 1 way, with minimal traffic was going to be about an hour. I asked if it would be ok if I came into work by 8 and worked till 4 because, no lie, every 10 minutes after 4 would add at least 20 minutes to my commute due to traffic in the cities. I was assured multiple times that this would be no problem, and that Spyder Trap has a culture that prides itself on "As long as you get your work done, we are very flexible. We expect you to be an adult, etc. etc." Sounds great. During my first couple of weeks I learned that almost all of the other members of the development team rode a bike to work, walked, or took the bus since they lived in the cities. I also noticed that none of my other teammates left at 4 (which I expected) but would routinely start the day between 8:30 and 9... almost a full hour after I had started the day. Around the 3rd week of my employment we had a team meeting where my manager said the following: "I have started to notice that some of you have been leaving early each day. Now, to me, I feel that if you don't stay late and put in extra hours you aren't really committed to the team or the projects that you are working on. Now, we have people on the team like BLANK who consistently stay till 6:00pm - 7:00pm. That shows me that they are super invested in the company and the projects and doing a good job. So, To those of you who consistently leave before then, and you know who you are, just consider the image you are portraying to the rest of the team." It was pretty clear that this was directed towards me... since I was the only one on the team that left at 4 each day. This really got me going because 1) I had gotten this cleared with my manager and the CFO of the company ( the CFO was on each of the calls during my initial recruitment) and 2) I had completed every task given to me on time or early. So, after the meeting I asked the manager if I could talk with him and asked him directly if he was referring to me, to which he admitted he was. So, I reminded him of what I was told during my agreement and I pointed out that, just because I have a family to get back to doesn't mean I lack commitment or don't care about my work or the projects I was on. He did acknowledge that I had completed everything asked, and that he was happy with my progress, and to forget about the meeting we had just had... This was all very weird. One last GIANT red flag. During a rough point in a schedule for a client project we were working on (we were under staffed and we kept agreeing to scope changes without adjusting timeline) we had to have yet another team meeting. In this meeting the manager explained that he knew why we were struggling with this deadline. It wasn't because we were under staffed. It wasn't because we kept expanding the scope. Nope... it was because he had been away from the team for a bit and was not able to properly micromanage us the way that he would have liked. "Micromanagement is the most efficient management style, and I haven't been able to do it as much as I would like. And if I were here to micro manage you guys more we would be ahead of schedule." This was said with a completely straight face with no detectable trace of sarcasm. He was completely serious. I started looking for a new job that day.

If you just want to collect a paycheck and go home you won't last long here. Everyone is expected to contribute