Unfortunately, the cons of working for Oberd / Universal Research Solutions greatly outweigh the pros. These include, but are not limited to:
1) The CEO, Ali Hussam, highly micromanages everything and everyone in the company. No other person is empowered to lead or positively benefit the company on their own. If there were more trust in other employees, I feel this would be a huge benefit to the company and its employees.
2) With so much micromanagement, there is no company culture set. The company culture is the mood of the CEO that day (or hour) and consistently changes.
3) For development/software engineering, there is a huge divide between junior developers and senior developers, aka "juniors" and "seniors." The "seniors" (there are four) are the software engineers that started with the company. The "juniors" (there are/were several) are the software engineers that started after the company was founded. For any developer that is hired (thus a "junior"), there is no chance of becoming a "senior" and no evidence that this type of promotion has ever been done. This divide is only made larger by the CEO who promotes this separation. “Seniors” are even separated from other development staff by being placed in other offices or another building because the CEO is worried that “juniors” will be too distracting. If the divide between “juniors” and “seniors” were to be made smaller, it would definitely increase the morale of every employee in development.
4) The "seniors" and "juniors" are all software engineers and do development work. However, there is a large divide in the work that is given to each. "Seniors" mostly get to work on new projects and investigate interesting new things, as well as fix some bugs and do ticklers. "Juniors" mostly work on bugs and ticklers, doing smaller menial work. This further hurts the morale of development, especially when many of the bugs caused in the system are made by “seniors” and “juniors” are made to fix these bugs. The “seniors” also do not necessarily have a higher skill level than several of the “juniors”, however this is not recognized.
5) The CEO talks frequently about wanting to give performance-based bonuses. I, as well as many others, have been promised performance-based bonuses since starting. Even though I am praised for my work, I never saw a performance-based bonus. There are several other people in this same situation. The company is not lacking for money, according to the CEO, so I do not understand why this does not happen. I do not like being given promises when they are not kept.
6) Performance reviews, we have all been told several times (including during interviews), are supposed to happen every 6-months and we will receive some type of bonus or reward during them. I was with the company long enough where several performance reviews should have happened. Still, though, there was never been a performance review while I was there.
7) It is almost impossible to get a raise, even after receiving a promotion.
8) A team atmosphere is not promoted within the organization. Most events that happen do not recognize anyone for their work or accomplishments except the top people of the company. This hurts the morale of everyone on the "bottom levels" of the company. Some influential people have been trying to change this, however it is hard to make positive change due to the CEO. Example: The CEO very frequently takes the “seniors” or other top people in the company out to Room 38, The Broadway, or several other nice places in Columbia. This is a rarity to happen with “juniors” though.
9) The company will not provide coffee for its employees. This has been requested several times by several people, however it is rejected every time. The more negative part of this is that the CEO has a $2000 espresso machine (he has confirmed) in his office, wine coolers stocked with wine, cigars, and many other nice amenities. On some occasions he will share with employees. This may not be a big deal overall, however when employees are not getting pay raises or other nice amenities but the CEO is flaunting (no exaggeration) such lavish things, it does not help morale.
10) ***There is no work/life balance***. Job hours are a strict 8am to 5pm with a 1 hour lunch break (but no other paid breaks). ~2 times per month, development employees are also required to stay late at night for software pushes. There is no extra compensation for this and no one gets to leave early any other day to compensate for time.
11) There is no learning or growth promoted. Software engineers are not given time/resources to learn or keep up to date with new technology, which is very important for their jobs. Most other development companies dedicate time/resources to this, however Oberd does not. To make matters worse, management sometimes lays blame on the software developers for “not requesting” extra time to learn, to go to conferences, etc. These things have been requested several times to several different managers only to be delayed or denied. Management should be promoting conferences and education to their software engineers.
12) The CEO walks around frequently talking *very* negatively and cursing openly. He does not always close doors or hide the fact that he is yelling at and tearing-down an employee. This creates an atmosphere of fear within the organization.
13) The CEO also walks around frequently making very risky remarks which are discriminatory or sexual in nature.
14) Several people, including myself, were terminated immediately after putting in a 2-weeks notice of resignation. If employees are kind enough to give advance notice, they should not be terminated immediately. They still have bills to pay and things to take care of. With this kind of retribution, employees will be encouraged to not give notice at all and will just quit right before starting a new job.
15) Close to half of the company’s software engineers have quit since May (that is 3 months at the time of this post). This development/software engineering company is NOT doing enough to keep its employees, especially software engineers. This is a small company of less than 50 people. Losing this large number of software engineers makes a large impact! Please care more about employees!
16) There are many work-specific things that I cannot post. However, I feel it important to note that there are other grievances.
In general, I believe most of the issues listed above are created by the CEO, Ali Hussam. I want to point out that there are several good people that work at Oberd and the company has great potential to go places. If these good people have more of a chance to shine and a better direction is provided, this company could grow immensely. I do not believe this will happen with the current CEO, though.