Pros
Alright here’s the truth. Yes this is a good place to learn, no it’s probably not going to benefit 80% of you in today’s job market. Most of these tasks that people get started here with for <5 years are extremely menial and will probably get replaced by AI in the next few years. I’ve been mulling this decision of posting this over for past few weeks but I think explaining this somewhere is the right thing to do: we’re all working on automation on the backend to cut costs and remove the need for sqaas. Hell, even most embedded positions are getting removed in the next couple years so a few of our QA Architects, Principals and a couple POCs can get rewarded for the extra work in their automation by taking over the contracts. It sucks to say but this company has always cared about protecting the individuals who’s been here since the beginning and will do anything to put us first. Even if this means screwing over recent grads or young kids to not have to cut our own salaries. It’s a bit sad to see how oftentimes my colleagues who’s been here for about a decade as well have weeks on end where they do almost nothing related to the tasks from their assigned business partners, but yet profit off of the hard work done by sqaas (of course when I say hard I usually mean easy just a lot of tasks). That part makes me the most guilty
Cons
I’ll give an honest break down the pay for those who are still interested:
You start at ~33,000
After a year you’ll be at ~36,000
After two years you’ll be at ~40,000
If you do get embedded you’ll be at ~44,000
From there you’ll probably be stuck at that for a while, I’ve seen people who’s been here for 5 years and barely broke 55,000.
However if (very unlikely I don’t see this happening at all) you become Principal, congratulations you’re finally an employee we care about - then you’ll be at ~80,000
Honest truth is only the VPs make high 6 figures. Every year Jeremiah would make presentations about the cost-benefit of sqaas and get raise after raise while at the same time laying people off when things get a bit rocky. Still think they/we care? But in this economy, even if you won’t take the 33,000, there’s always going to be another sucker who would. After all, sqaas is easy menial labor