Some cons about Nextech, hmm where to start?
One would be that even though you can work from home, there are limitations. If you're a person who hates traffic like myself, you dread driving to the office and being stuck in traffic for an hour or sometimes more. So if you are a new hire and you ask to work from home to avoid the traffic you are denied. All the work that is performed can be done from home. There's nothing special about the software where you need to be in the office.
If you're not a complete "nerd" per say it's quite awkward being in an office setting where mostly everyone seems to like the same things such as Star Wars, Harry Potter, and etc.
The deadlines are quite ridiculous, there are two week sprints and a ton of time wasted in groomings. The groomings I feel are pointless, because usually during the planning at the beginning of the sprint, whatever was written usually has to get discussed again due to miscommunication, incorrect information, or lack of information.
Oh and don't get me started on groomings. How are you suppose to get a handful of stories done when you have groomings three times a week that last over an hour?
This can hurt you if you are a new developer and inexperience, because you will commit to less stories and possibly have stories fall over due to not having enough time to complete your stories.
I should also mention it doesn’t help that there are some team members who are just rude. You ask a question to help with your story and you get a sarcastic answer or even worse no answer at all. In addition to this type of toxic environment, If you get stuck on a story many times the senior developers either like I said above give you sarcastic answers, vague answers or just tell you to pick up another story.
When it is time to do the code review the senior developer will have you rewrite your code to their liking as if they wrote it. So you really don't feel like you're learning. Also there’s a lot of back and forth if you try to implement a new change and 100% of the time if you don’t have seniority your idea will not be recognized.
Lastly if you’re not used to a city life, be prepared for the high cost of living. For the wage that I was given, I still was struggling. I had a difficult time finding a place to stay due to a lot of fraud advertisements, and had to stay in a hotel for about three months. Car insurance is significantly high and you have to pay for it, otherwise your license will be suspended. I luckily didn’t have my license suspended. You WILL be in traffic everyday sometimes it can last up to an hour. Just making a simple errand to the store can turn into a three to four hour trip. Stores can be packed all hours of the day. So if you’re looking to go shopping be prepared to be standing in line for a long time. You will and can come across some rude people, so it’s almost best to stay home.
This job is really for people who do not have a family or dependents. If you are looking to get your career started, then sure. Having a family definitely made my dedication to this job a lot harder. Being that school was only 4hrs long and I had to use my lunch break to pick up my daughter from school prior to finding a decent daycare. Even when I found a daycare I found myself rushing to grab her, because they closed at 6:30pm and even though I would be done with work at 5pm, I wouldn’t get to the daycare until close to 6:20pm, due to traffic. I couldn’t muster up enough energy to enjoy myself on the weekends, due to the cost of everything, the stress during the week and the overall lack of community.
