SADA is Unpleasant (and uses fake reviews here) - Developer SADA Employee Review

1.0
Feb 25, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The biggest pros were my colleagues in the trenches with me. I learned a lot and enjoyed working with them. However, this was overshadowed by the cons. Namely management.

Cons

Firstly, the other high-star ratings are a fabrication by SADA itself -- which practices deceptive public image techniques, like fake reviews on sites like this. As a former employee, I was present when such methods were being discussed. The development team is grossly underpaid, as they focus most of their money on the sales team. While both are important, if you focus so completely on sales and short-change development, you end up with a company that successfully hawks sub-par products and services. But this is consistent with the used-car dealership theme exuded by the CTO -- Hovig -- father of the CEO, Tony. Hovig is a nightmare to work for -- not only because he's a pompous, disrespectful, micro-manager, but mostly because he's incompetent. He can't seem to get out of his own way -- unable to transition from the small business, used-car salesmen mentality that impedes real growth. The other reviews on here that attempt to invalidate such critique by claiming they are written by disgruntled, incompetent employees are part and parcel of the previously mentioned fabricated reviews. I worked with some truly talented, hard working people at SADA who had been there for years -- but ended up leaving with the same grievances. There's only so much unhappiness a person can take in their professional lives. And as stated in other reviews -- there's a reason for the incredibly high turnover rate. In a nutshell, SADA Systems is a small-time, small-minded company -- not due to the inadequacies of its employees, but rather the incompetency and egos of key players in management. As a salesman, SADA Systems might be worth the compensation, but as a developer, keep looking -- you deserve better. And as a technology company, that's a sad state of affairs.

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SADA Response
11y
As the CEO and President of SADA Systems, I take feedback from employees and customers very seriously and make every effort to make necessary changes to address them. This is my first response to Glassdoor reviews, and moving forward, I will be personally responding to feedback and implementing constructive suggestions at SADA. Regarding this posting specifically: Our People Operations team attended a Glassdoor seminar that expressed the importance of requesting your current workforce to leave continuous and constructive feedback on Glassdoor. We do encourage our employees to visit Glassdoor regularly and submit their own reviews. However, we have never encouraged employees to leave “fake reviews”. Our employees are free to express themselves with honest feedback. After reading some of the negative posts, some of our employees have taken personal offense by comments made by former employees and personally campaigned to motivate other employees to share the true story about SADA. With due diligence and industry analysis, as well as recruitment agency feedback, SADA remains competitive with compensation and benefits, across all of our positions. If an offer with competitive compensation package is accepted by a new employee, then there shouldn't be any complaints or comparisons made by the employee. The market simply doesn't make it possible for SADA to underpay anyone, in any position. And because we aim to recruit and retain for the long term, we don’t have a strategy that aims to underpay our employees for any period of time. Some of the great colleagues mentioned in this post are still with SADA and some are now part of the management team. SADA has also recently hired a COO to own key aspects of operations and service delivery. We are evolving and maturing quickly and there’s bound to be some growing pains while keeping pace with market demand that has helped SADA grow an average of 50%+ per year for the past 14 years. We take all constructive feedback seriously and work to make the improvements with new roles and additional opportunities, as well as adding new benefits such as employee development funds as well as unlimited PTO. We’ve tried our best not to respond to obvious rants by employees who were not a cultural fit, however in this case I’m responding due to the personal attack on co-founder of SADA Systems and CTO/CIO. Our CTO/CIO is a highly educated man with a Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics and has been in this field since the inception of “IT”. He has held important roles in different technology companies but most importantly he has founded and grown SADA to where it is today: one of only 26 Microsoft National Solutions Providers as well as a Google for Work Premier Partner. Very few companies, if any, can be categorized as a premier go-to partner for both Google and Microsoft. He also received the 2013 Los Angeles Business Journal’s CIO of the Year Award. We are proud of our accomplishments and most importantly we are proud of our team! Again, thank you for your feedback and we hope you’re happy in your new job.

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5.0
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CEO approval
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Pros

Remote First Culture Flexibility Trust: The culture generally leans toward autonomy Cutting-Edge Tech

Cons

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1.0
Aug 26, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

There are smart people here.

Cons

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