Terrible place to work - Senior Developer Groupe Azur Employee Review

1.0
Sep 28, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

1 beer/wine glass on Friday afternoons, whose bill is split among employees Eventual get-togethers at some restaurant (each person pays their bills) Close to 0 pressure, most of the time Free coffee, milk and cereals. Free pizza for lunch once a month, besides being the cheapest and most horrible pizza possible.

Cons

First off, they lie to their new hires, or at least, they lied to me. I was told I would get a raise after the 3 months probation and sick days. After the probation was over, I was told no one in the company has any sick days at all, and that I "couldn't" get that raise because my evaluation was good, and it would need to excellent. Also, i was told there was a lot of room for growth, which from my pov there's close to none. Company is well organized and mostly everyone is very friendly. However, there's close to zero training, or as the seniors like to joke about, the training is "trial by fire". There's close to zero documentation about the business rules and how the code works. Some stored procedure and classes are avoided being changed because no one knows for sure how they work. You are supposed to reverse engineer the code to understand how it works, because making too many questions may unplease certain people. Depending on their mood, you may be properly helped or just get a harsh explanation. This is related mostly to IRIS project, the one I worked at. Lunch time is not paid, but you are supposed to attend to videos and meetings about the company during lunch time. Air conditioner barely works and some people buy fans to stand the heat. You have free coffee and cereals everyday, and fruits every Monday. Employees share some beer on Friday, for which the company contributes with $20. Team leads are allowed to eventually work from home, but not regular employees. There are no sick days at all; you or a relative get sick and you miss work, you won't get paid; at least for regular employees. You are required to dress formally; this is even one of the criteria for promotion. 2 weeks of vacation with no increase overtime. There's no incentive to learn or develop skills, related or not to your current tasks. Like once a month, there's a get together at some local pub or restaurant. RH is usually frightening and stalks you at job portals. If you update your profile or resume even if that's routine for you, you can expect to be called out. That's possibly because they lose people almost every week to companies who provide better benefits and conditions. Also, you are required to have an "excellent" evaluation to get a raise, or even to keep your job. "Good" apparently isn't good at all. Also, they hire people who can't speak neither english or french, so you can see how good the RH department is. A recent "anonymous" pool among employees indicated that 26% of all of them are currently looking for better jobs. A considerable number are unhappy, and the main reasons are the lack of communication from management and the poor salaries and benefits. Besides talking for weeks about how the company got 2 new big projects and that he plans to hire 2x more developers, CEO says he has no money for improving conditions for his current employees. To finalize, it's a great temporary job for those looking to earn their initial experience or just looking patiently for a real permanent job. On a side note, in my last weeks, I made public that my wife was pregnant. I had to attend to medical appointments with her, which they suspected to be job interviews. The fun thing is: not a single manager, team lead or member of the HR department congratulated me for this pregnancy; only my immediate circle of colleagues. I think that says a lot about how friendly and welcoming the work place is. EDIT: 5 minutes after giving the company 1 star on google reviews, I was contacted by one their managers on linkedin who sent the following message: "Not sure why you are so mad at us buddy, but please be aware defamation is illegal in Canada." I guess that proves most of what I said in this review.

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Groupe Azur Response
7y
We want to thank you for taking the time to leave your opinion. We are sorry you didn’t enjoy your experience with us. As we value and consider all feedback, there are a few issues we would like to address. First, we would like to remind you that for a business our size, we offer competitive benefits, such as a free insurance plan that covers a wide range of services (dental and healthcare professionals, prescriptions, medical supplies and services, medical travel coverage, counselling services, long term disability and life insurance) paid 100% by the company. We offer a pizza and chicken lunch every month to present our new employees and we pay lunches at restaurants to our employees when it’s their birthday, amongst many other incentives. We also have Lunch & Learn activities where employees present subjects of their choice IT-related or some other informative subjects, which employees attend for fun and are not required to do so. We also value work-life balance by offering a flexible schedule. However, remote work is not allowed for some of our developers (yes, even team leads) out of respect for our valued clients since many of our projects require to process sensitive data. Security is a big issue for us and our clients trust us on that matter. Nonetheless, we know that there is always place for improvement and this is why we already added a fixed number of paid personal/sick days. Vacations days increase according to Quebec’s Labour Standards act. We’re also changing the benefit plan to make it better for all of our employees. Our fast growth is a challenge for all departments, and we are taking the time to implement new procedures. It is important to let you know that if we want to do things right, we have to take the time to do so. We are proud to tell our new hires that we have opportunities for them. By offering them a collaborative work environment, we want to give them the tools to thrive. This is why we give them the possibility to show us their best skills and we reward our talented employees for that. The way an employee dresses or look does not have an impact on such decisions. Such a possibility is not a given in every company. AZUR Group is an inclusive work environment and we are proud to have employees from all kinds of different backgrounds. Our work environment allows them to also improve on a personal level. Saying that, most employees are bilingual, but some employees don’t speak French or English based on their accent or speech is a value-based judgement, which is unfair to your ex-colleagues. As any employer, we expect a few things from our employees in exchange of what we provide them. We expect that our employees work their hours and notify the appropriated resource in case of any problem. Responsible team players with great sense of initiative, positive attitude, that are results-oriented will always progress quickly and be valued. We wish to let you know that any employee that might have spoken to you on a personal level has not done so in the name of our company and that their position does not reflect ours. Best wishes in your new ventures.

Explore other reviews about Groupe Azur

2.0
Feb 4, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Employees create a fun environment in certain teams. However, if you are not part of these teams, the team spirit won't be as good. The high turnover means it's a great place to get a lot of experience and then move on to another job with a better employer. Some of the teams are working with a good mix of new technologies which is great. I rarely had to do overtime.

Cons

The higher ups keep talking and doing nothing to address the issues. A lot of newer employees are paid under their market value which means the company has trouble hiring talent in the Montreal market. The CEO thinks he heads an awesome company and that everyone else is wrong, is often disrispectfull to employees and refuses to see reality. The company lost around one employee a week before I quit and had been losing them for over 3 month. There is also a rampant nepotism where old employees are given responsibilities despite failing to deliver any successful projects in the last 3 years.

6
5.0
Apr 14, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Team is amazing, I only worked for the IRIS team, everybody will help you with the tasks. - Technology front end Angular 2 and Back end C# - They can pay you to take the Microsoft certifications - Social Events every month (free food) and free beer every Friday. In general the environment and the people are fantastic , the releases are well planned, the team leaders are good technically and management the team.

Cons

-Vacation (below the market) - Salaries review once a year might be unfair ( if you started 1 or 3 month before the annual review you’ll need to wait until next year to get results)

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