System Engineer - Systems Engineer Fixstars Employee Review

3.0
Jul 28, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Lots of books and equipment. Development on both Windows and Unix systems. Quite a lot of internal seminars.

Cons

No career path, lots of over time work, difficulty taking holidays. Any interest in other company projects is considered negative (!). Quite high employee turnover. The lack of professional certifications. Very small bonuses.

Explore other reviews about Fixstars

5.0
Mar 6, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Supportive managers who care about your growth

Cons

Salary is lower than market for American firms

1.0
Sep 14, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You might get to work on interesting projects if you are lucky for EXTREMELY low pay (poverty wage) in California.

Cons

Extremely low pay for California for high skilled in-demand labor such as machine learning engineers. The CEO is clueless half the time. You are essentially doing contract work for other companies. HR is all about screwing you over. They love to screw around with your immigration status and use scare tactics with their onboarding documents. The CEO literally told me that H1B is based on job performance. Few days later HR called me and told me that they will sponsor anything and everything to get me onboard. When I was about to resign HR told me that there is not going to be any OPT evaluation since I resigned even though they signed the i983 which is a contract between them and the DHS. Few minutes later the same guy from HR contacted me again requesting me to push back my resignation date so that the company doesn't get sued. This is so that they can screw over my visa status. At one point it got so bad that I had to get U.S. immigration enforcement involved. This is a very predatory company that preys on students on STEM OPT since they do not have the freedom to resign at will due to issues with performance evaluation with DHS. Most of the people in HR and the company in general are literal family members of the CEO. During onboarding, they make you sign a notification to new employer agreement. This type of agreement is generally impossible to enforce as the company would have to show non-speculative evidence that they will suffer or have suffered damages as a result of your failure to notify your prospective employer or have the company notify your prospective employer. This type of agreement is a scare tactic. This should hopefully help you get an idea of the nature of the people running the company.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All