Great as a last resort fresh out of college - Quality Assurance Analyst Trainee SQAsquared Employee Review

1.0
Jan 28, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The small office environment means you can make friends pretty quickly. Most of the guys there are pretty fresh out of college or early in their careers, so they all have a lot in common. There is a ping-pong table in the office, and during the interview process, the managers let you know that you're encouraged to learn to play. The managers are generally pretty chill (I often squared off against mine in ping-pong a few times a week). Free food on Wednesdays, free snacks, and a Keurig coffee machine with lots of top-notch coffee. Things generally stay pretty low-key. Even during rush periods, it's a fairly relaxed place to work.

Cons

Although the office is a pretty lax environment, the managers have a strange dichotomy where they will be friendly and amicable one moment, and stringent and callous the next. This leads to a massive lack of faith in management that everyone, including company veterans, feels very strongly. One of the things that bothered me the most was the management's attitude towards time off. We were told by one manager that if we wanted to keep our jobs, it would be in our best interest to not take sick days. I was also denied time off to attend a funeral of a close relative. Overtime is poorly managed, as you're not allowed to work overtime unless you put in a request, which has to pass through the bureaucracy before inevitably being denied. The exception to this rule (again, because of that dichotomy), is when particular teams are pressed for deadlines, at which point, overtime becomes mandatory (not optional). Probably the biggest issue, though, was the perceived lack of interest in new employees on behalf of the company. Many new employees were thrown onto teams by themselves, leaving the rest of us to do the best we could to help while also juggling our own assignments. Underexperienced workers are expected to complete massive amounts of work for little pay. Overall, it's a small amount of money for a large amount of work.

Explore other reviews about SQAsquared

5.0
Sep 23, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

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

4
4.0
Oct 13, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Training is offered, Real experience with different projects and technologies Good Experience for newly grads

Cons

- Low pay - Lack of mentorship from the people ahead of you

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