Pleasant Solutions Reviews

Pros

Flexible work/life situation. Lots of respect to the CEO, top marks, cares for everyone. They take care of their employees, everyone was sent home to work remote when Covid Struck. Always felt they have safety and health as a top priority here. They give what you need to succeed at your position, and you have an opportunity here to discover different new ways to find success with innovation and creativity. No wasted communication, direct and to the point.

Cons

Production can be bottle-necked when specialized positions are not filled with the right people.

Pros

Lots of great talent..wasted away

Cons

bad management bad hr worst hiring process should be called Unpleasant Solutions

Pros

Willing to hire junior dev, lots of opportunity for learning (on your own).

Cons

Underpaid, no benefits, bad communication, projects going off the rails, very tight time constraints. Flat hierarchy seems unable to support growth.

Pros

Variety of work, intelligent/competent employees. Free snacks. There are scooters in the office so you can race up and down the hallways. For creative writing people, the CEO might get you to write some favorable reviews on Glassdoor. He told me once he was concerned about some of the negative reviews and wanted to try and counteract them by having employees write some positive reviews. OK place to work while you are looking for alternatives.

Cons

Management doesn't really know what they are doing. Just sort of winging it. CEO has no real-world experience but believes he is an expert. He is the one who established many of the processes and procedures. These are generally best guesses and don't work well. Most projects struggle and many fail (explains why legal services is so important to the company). Internal projects are probably the worst. Lower level management not much better. Very little practical experience. Your opinion doesn't matter regardless of your experience, knowledge, or education. None of these are important. Psychological testing in order to get hired? Most organizations in the world don't do this because there's little evidence that it actually works. Somehow Pleasant has this all figured out and has no doubt in successfully gleaning the best employees. Unfortunately few employees seem to stick around very long. Turnover is really high. Employee retention doesn't seem important. Minimal benefits. When I joined the company there wasn't even any health benefits. I asked about this and the CEO told me "why should I pay for someone's wife to get a pair of glasses". Pretty much says it all right there. Size of the company has shrunk significantly. When I was there we had a PM/BA team of around 10 or 12 people. I think that has shrunk to 1 or 2 now. Sales team used to be 7 and is 1 the last I heard. This is not a growing vibrant company. Most growth is in areas unrelated to IT and not particularly profitable (i.e. video production). Office building is dated and drab. Like something out of the 60s. Much more suited to an industrial type operation rather than a high-tech IT firm. Raises are few and far between. Rewards are non-existent. Never any pats on the back, mostly criticism without any sort of meaningful dialog on how to improve things.

Pros

- interesting projects - work on multiple different projects consecutively - practical impact, you see your impact

Cons

- strict time management - a lot of benefits mentioned didn't apply to anywhere else besides Edmonton - some unrealistically tight deadlines

Pros

Can't think of any pros

Cons

Nonexisting perks, lackluster salary, bad leadership

Pros

The only pro is the free soft drinks and snacks.

Cons

Horrible CEO. Self centered and doesn't listen to anyone.

Pros

Note: I worked in the satellite office in Vancouver, Not at the head office. -Autonomy in work. No managers in the Vancouver office, so you are in full control of your work environment -You are able to work on many projects at once. There are numerous projects available with different technologies, so there is a lot of chances to learn -Flexible hours. Only 10am-noon and 1pm-3pm are required in office. Outside of that, you can work any hours as long as you meet the weekly minimum -Other developers are good, smart people -Free snacks

Cons

-There are multiple PMs, all working different projects. Communication between the PMs can sometimes be lacking, leading to development time conflicts with developers. -Some of the PMs are not very good at communication with developers. I waited 3 weeks at one point to get feedback from a PM, despite multiple follow ups. -The training is done via following a wiki page to make a single tiny project. No person-on-person training. When starting a new project with a new coding language I had never used before, I asked for training from the managers. I was told that I could get training from outside the company via online courses, which I would have to pay for myself. -Lower level developers are only given small tasks without any knowledge of the overarching project. This makes it tough to make integrated solutions without understanding the main goals of the projects. -Weekly hours are capped at 36. This is framed as them giving us more breaks for our health, but it is pretty clearly a chance for the company to stop us from being actual "full time" employees, so that they don't have to give us full time benefits like PTO. -While working you are on a running clock. You have to stop this clock any time you are not directly working (eating a snack, going to the washroom, getting water). If you have any time discrepancies, you get a notice from HR and have to justify all the time in question. The rationale is that the client shouldn't be paying for us to "use the washroom", but why would a company not account for human needs when estimating work done by humans? -Only benefit available is a 50% covered healthcare plan (opt-in). -Very low starting pay (40k/year as a entry-level developer), with the promise of a salary review and "major" (quoting the CEO from my onboarding interview) pay increase at 1 year. Many other employees reported not getting their salary review on time, with some waiting more than 2 years for their promised raise. -Very high turnover rate. In 9 months, I saw 3 people quit (out of an 8 person office), and at least 3 more have left since then.

Pros

If you are an optimistic person and confident that you are valuable to the company, just be straightforward and tell your manager you want more responsibilities. Ask and it will be given to you. Then work hard for it and prove that you are deserving.

Cons

Processes sometimes take longer because you are not sure who to ask.

Pros

* Hours and vacation are super flexible with almost zero OT. Great life-work balance. * Work can sometimes be incredibly varied with lots to learn. * Management has great ethics. * Very little gatekeeping with regards to previous experience or schooling. If you can do the work, you can do the work. * Internal projects can be pretty cool and quality focused. * People are friendly and polite. No toxic work culture here. * Great opportunities to lead projects from start to finish.

Cons

* Internal technical direction is lagging in some areas. Innovation is possible on a per-project basis by devs but there is trouble communicating ideas company-wide. * Project management can be a bit chaotic with shifting priorities and staff turnover. Like with development, individual PMs are trying to innovate on their own to make things work. * Pay may start low for juniors and benefits don't come standard; management is willing to work towards salary goals though.