AmTrust Software Developer reviews

zero organization in IT at least with the groups I dealt with on a daily basis. There seems to be some middle management and leaders that have good ideas and know how things should be organized but the lack of their bosses being involved with something as petty as titles and reporting structures causes morale issues. I was in one meeting where a manager from another IT department was telling my team what to do. There is nepotism that is mentioned in previous posts but those people really don't do anything so they seem insignificant to any of the real issues. Bad product gets pushed out because of it but upper management wants to sell the software even when it stinks. poor testing and many different deployment methods causes bugs and bad pushes. BAs seem to not know the product, the business or what end users need. Everyone seems to be working on new products and not maintaining current deployments. always on to the next thing. Many times the next thing is incorporating a new company which makes sense. Project Management is non-existent and priorities change constantly. I was pitched modern programming (C++) but its mostly fixing old stuff. The office setup is terrible. Open floor plans and bench seating with a handful of conference rooms that are always taken doesn't allow private conversations and many groups are loud at times. onboarding is a rough process as they throw you in and hope you can swim in the messiness. Forget about raises that are significant even if you take on more responsibility.

AmTrust's problems stem from the poorly-trained management and no corporate culture. You'll get negative feedback on your performance in the form of tersely worded emails from managers, who don't see the point in face-to-face communication with their team members, and no positive feedback whatsoever. I, for one, had to relay messages between my team lead and another, both of whom had temper issues and refused to speak to each other directly. My team leads and manager were irascible, unapproachable people, and promoted an environment where talking to one another for non-business purposes was discouraged. My team members and I quickly learned that they are averse to so much as being greeted or spoken to in the hallway. While the toxic managerial interactions made working there plenty intolerable, I should also add that AmTrust pays its developers well below the average rate. I know of fellow developers who, after having worked there for years, received no pay raises, despite positive performance evaluations. Further, as a developer, you are corralled into a certain programming specialty without the opportunity to explore other areas of .NET development--either you are a web developer, a database manager, and so forth. They will say you have every opportunity to expand and learn new things, but that is invariably a lie. I found my .NET growth being stunted, since there's only so much new C#/VB syntax to learn on the backend. Do what I did; come to AmTrust for a solid introduction to .NET programming, and then leave.