Blackhawk Network reviews

I wish I could list more pros than cons... but I can't even come close Mark my review down as the same as the previous "I've been doing software development for 15 years and I've never seen anything remotely close to Blackhawk". Politics exist in all organizations where humans are involved, but Blackhawk seems to be an extreme outlier. At least in Blackhawks's IT department, the culture seems to be based on "consultant culture" where everything is viewed in isolation with a "slash and burn" approach. All nighters and weekends are not uncommon. Organizational: Blackhawk is an *incredibly* politicized environment, at all levels, from top level management all the way down to the engineer level. To survive, it is necessary to determine the political ramifications of almost every decision. Yelling is often the way arguments are won. As a former colleague mentioned in another review "under the bus" culture is so prevalent, it seems unusual when someone *is not* thrown under the bus for making a mistake. To survive, your "under the bus instinct" needs to be razor sharp. Blackhawk is a "work hard" and not a "work smart" environment, in which innovation is stifled in favor of toil. Leadership (oops, I mean "management"): Chaos reigns. There is vision delivered from the top, but it never seems to materialize at the implementation level. Threats are often used as a motivational tool. Technical: Blackhawk's Issuance platform is entirely proprietary and will not help your resume outside of the Blackhawk building. If you interview to work on java for a job on this team, you will not work on java. The proprietary tools that are used do not support any modern development methodologies, so forget about that too. Because of the aforementioned politics, there seems to be fear about changing any of this. If you want to work in non-testable, procedural (and non OOP) environment, then this is the tool for you ;) If you are a non citizen or non green card holder (i.e. if you hold an H1-B that you will need sponsored either by Blackhawk or a contracting agency that will contract you to Blackhawk): Be especially wary - STAY AWAY, FAR AWAY: In many cases, these poor folks seem to be exploited as the "peasant caste", who work the most crazy, thankless hours.

There are many problems in BHN's IT department and they stem all the way from the top. It's OK to bring in buddies to hold important positons if they're competent but it's definitely bad to promote inexperience people to be the front line lieutenants. Because of these questionable promotions, people with minimal IT experience prior to BHN are now in key management positions. The lack of their experience not only shows in technical incompetency but management as well. The culture is very negative and ignorant, again, is because everything flows from the top. One's disrespectful attitude towards other senior executives and employees behind their backs gives his lieutenants the wrong idea that such conduct is acceptable and they follow the same to treat their employees. Don't get me wrong, these are not dumb people. However, they seem to be too smart to listen, too smart to see and too smart to learn. Some of them will probably have to go work for an established silicon valley company to get a few ideas how to run an IT department well before they even try to recruit A+ players from these companies. Bottom line is, if you're an IT professional who wants to be treated as such BHN is probably not for you.