Firstly, they clearly remove reviews from current employees. It’s well known that they have requested for Glassdoor to have certain reviews removed. Employees are scared of being punished for their opinion, so when glassdoor asks if the current employee stands behind the review, current employees opt for their review to be removed since there is a concern they will lose their anonymity.
TERRIBLE salary range. They prey upon engineers/other employees who are new to the solar industry so that they can pay you less and you won’t complain because, hey, at least you’re getting into solar, right? Well, that’ll basically never go up. No matter how much you prove yourself or show that you are valuable for your team, you won’t be rewarded monetarily. Expect minimal pay raises even when you’ve worked harder than you honestly should have, and be prepared for the day when the new hire gets paid 20% more than you even though you have the same level of experience at that point.
They’ll tell you their salaries are comparable to the industry average because they hide behind a 20% bonus that “we basically hit every year.” What they won’t tell you is they only hit the full bonus when they are bought by a new company willing to front the money. You’d think the KPIs would be achievable given that the management sets it . . . WRONG. It's pretty well-known that the only people who think they can hit the KPIs is the management. Ask ANY engineer, project manager, construction manager, transaction manager, or janitor if the goals are attainable they will say no. Not to mention they don’t get set until the year is halfway over. People don’t know what impossible goal they are striving for individually until the year is half over. Even if you hit those goals there is a chance they won’t give you the bonus because management decides they were too easy after the year has been completed or worse they will put you on a personal improvement plan after no indication that they were dissatisfied with your work and then fire you a week later to avoid giving you any bonus at all.
They removed a hybrid model and care more about people physically being in a chair from 8:30-5:00 than they do about actually getting work done. However, they somehow don’t mind hiring remote candidates for senior or management positions.
If an employee dares to leave, their last two weeks are awkward and sad. Instead of management thanking soon-to-be ex-employees for their hard work, they ostracize them and leave them with a terrible taste in their mouths with only bad things to say about their experiences. Every solar conference you go to, there will be a former SSI employee willing to say what a bad experience they had at SSI.
Often the morale is just low and sad, typically because there was just a major exodus of employees, or the CEO had an all-hands where he just told people to dig in, be more efficient, and just work harder…but no, we won’t be paying you more money.
This is specific to the engineering department - the Vice President thinks everything needs to go through them because he feels that he and his department are the only truly competent people at the company.
There is just clear animosity between some groups. You essentially need to work around certain egos that everyone knows are problematic but instead of management having a discussion or getting rid of clearly sexist and time-consuming people, there is just an expectation for you to get used to it.
There is an inability to retain talent. Almost the whole company rolls over every 2 years, see reasons above, meaning you lose all the people who make working for such a mid, blood-sucking company somewhat bearable and inevitably become the soon-to-be-ex-employee leaving with a bad taste in their mouth.
