Management is poor. They live in the Virgin Islands half the year so are never there. They make decisions based on what they hear from middle managers and their friends who work there. Many of the employees went to school or grew up with the owners and/or middle management and these people are given the best treatment and an inordinate amount of influence. It is more important to be friends and get in good with key people rather than just keeping your head down and doing your work. It is very cliquey. It is a lot like high school. I learned the hard way that people are very two faced here. They will smile at you and pretend to be your friend then turn around and badmouth you to management behind your back. If you are not involved in the catty office politics game you are going to fall behind no matter how hard you work.
People are fired from this company left and right. That might make sense in a small company that cannot afford to be loyal but this company should have transitioned out of that a long time ago. Turnover has costs. Firing so much has morale costs as well. The morale in the development department was rock bottom in the last months I was there. I would definitely not recommend a developer position at this company at all....unless you are old frat brothers with management or something. Then maybe it could work out for you.
Unpaid overtime is expected, and not appreciated. I worked unpaid overtime pretty much every other weekend. On my one year review I was told that I was only 'meeting expectations' with my hours. To be 'exceeding expectations' I was told that I should work every single weekend for free, regardless of if the deadlines were big or small, important or not. Not sure then how to get marked 'outstanding'. I guess you would have to pay adboom for the privilege of working for them?
I was a one man development team working on a very large project and almost single handedly got it to the revenue generating phase with our first clients. I was not rewarded in the slightest for this. They really had no clue how much I did for them and seemed really irritated when the new CTO tried to explain to them that I actually was very valuable. They now have four people filling my old position...so I guess I wasn't so unproductive afterall. They had promised me a raise last January if I got the project to the revenue generating phase. However, when I pressed this issue management forgot their earlier promises and told me to wait another 6-12 months. I was already being paid 20 grand below average for my position, so this was a real smack in the face. I got the raise I wanted, but had to get it from another company. Not sure why strangers valued me so much more than my 'friends' at adboom. I really regret working here. I regret all the hours of free overtime I gave them. I regret ever meeting any of these people.
