Pros
It WAS a fantastic company during Redknee times, Even though there was a lot of work pressure, it was fun - because everyone participated like a team and there was less politics and back-stabbing.
Cons
Now it is a private team of cohorts and boot-lickers of the CTO. Initially he seemed to be a good chap with good intentions of reviving the company fortunes after ESW, but over the last 4 years, it has become clear - he is a selfish person with no vision and acumen for architecture. 1. He brought in his own bunch of jokers with 0 experience of the Telecom BSS world. They screwed RnD and burnt up the 60 million USD they were given. All new joiners take 2 months to ramp up, thereby increasing overheads by 3 times of what was required earlier. 2. The company has become a more of a SI than a product company, with nepotism (Founders of DT, the company supplying Order management and Catalog are friends of the CTO) and suspected kickbacks (Repeated deals to a company called EnS, at costs higher than their own people who are forced to train EnS persons) reeking in all deals. 3. The managers from Belfast are absolutely biased, especially towards the people from the Indian subcontinent. Every effort has been made to blame them, while the European and Belfast teams enjoy all the benefits and Work-life balance. 4. Off-late, the icing on the cake - after the announcement of the JV with Qvantel, the CTO has offered to Qvantel all the recent deals Optiva got, This is to secure his own position and to hide his failures in the ongoing product development and deliveries. This guy has single-handedly, with the active help of his cohorts, managed to mislead the CEO and the board. The message from the CTO is simple - lick my boots, or else you will be booted out.
