MindGeek Employee Reviews about "free breakfast"

Pros

- Free breakfast - Start work at 10:30 - Environment very relaxed - Events are pretty cool

Cons

- Job autonomy lacking - Time management is a pain

Pros

• Personally: this is the most fun job I have ever had. I have never had the ability to grow so much and so quickly at a company, and I have never been so happy to go to work • It's as fast- or as slow-paced as you want it to be, most of the time (with the exception of occasionally emergencies) • The software developers are great. Open-minded, kind, collaborative. Really awesome people! • Company has adapted to the Covid-19 Pandemic better than any other company in Montreal that I have heard of. MindGeek quickly shifted to work-from-home before it was mandated by the government, and has requested that employees stay working from home for the foreseeable future (at least until 2021). The CEO committed to not having the pandemic result in any layoffs. Very, very impressive on this front • Flex hours: show up and leave when you want as long as you are present for core hours (10am-4pm) • Summer Hours: leave at 1pm on Friday if you logged all your time for the week. (Applicable from June 1 to August 28) • Amazing quality FREE coffee: Illy & Starbucks Machines, freshly ground • Huge quarterly parties (5 à 7s, Summer BBQ, Halloween, Christmas) • Free breakfast (croissants, muffins, cereal, fruit, juice, etc.)

Cons

• Initial compensation is usually pretty decent, but pay raises after that are not typically very good (expect ~3% yearly unless you get a major promotion, regardless of the amount or quality of work you do) • Company is more interested in optimizing costs than code. They don't pay enough to retain the best developers, and it seems this is by design -- they want obedient little automatons who pump out cheap code like a PHP factory. This is a short-sighted strategy that I have seen backfire repeatedly, and that many developers I knew who left the company warned me about going back years, but upper management has no visibility on how much this choice costs them in the long run. They focus instead on graphs that show them how many new features go out and how fast, and they reward developers for speed rather than robust, reliable design or code maintainability. Then they freak out when these choices put them in legally or technically perilous situations, but fail to make substantive changes to the culture to correct this issue because that would inconvenience upper / middle management • Culture of nepotism. Expect to see incompetent people with bad attitudes promoted because of who they are friends with rather than the value they bring to the company • The higher up management goes, the more problematic the company's cultural issues appear to be. Most problems at the software developer level come from middle- or upper- management • The culture is fraught with indecision, and as far as I can tell it has been this way for many years. People higher up want the flexibility to change long term plans for software deliverables at the last second, but also want estimates by developers provided weeks or months in advance to be near flawless. You are expected to be near-perfect in your execution of long-term plans, but also are expected to accommodate tons of last-minute changes. It is unrealistic, and has been a problem for years before I arrived by all accounts. You will not be punished for failing, but it is demoralizing to constantly be told you are not doing a good job when you are killing yourself trying • There is a huge need for Project Managers who can properly coordinate big deliverables between teams, as inter-team communications is very, very bad • No Group RRSPs or financial contribution plans. Issue has been brought up repeatedly, but the company downplays it like the people who work there are "too young to need to think about finances"

Pros

Good place to start, not to stay. Free breakfast (not anymore while WFH).

Cons

Nepotism across the whole management. Base Salary below industry median. Change of strategy and targets all the time. Do not value employees like assets but as disposable ressources. Culture of Fear. No Retirements plans while the CEO and C-Levels are driving Porsches and Lamborghinis...

Pros

Free breakfast. Parties. Lots of technologies making it a great learning environment. Fun environment.

Cons

No remote (working from home)

Pros

Flex time, good free breakfast every morning and free lunch once a month, great staff parties, easy work

Cons

Way below average salaries, weird management due to exceptionally high turnover, inexperienced managers, redundant content, not much room for creativity, VERY high turnover.