Avoid the APLES Contract Reston, VA / Kearneysville, WV - Anonymous employee Synergy BIS Employee Review

1.0
Aug 2, 2020
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It pays better than unemployment. Synergy will clear you, which at least makes you more marketable when you decide you've had enough and it's time to leave.

Cons

Core 8-4 hours ruthlessly enforced per the contract. There was no work from home (WFH) option until COVID hit. Even now WFH 8-4 core hours are enforced, assuming the VPN isn't overloaded. If you can't connect, you drive to work that day. Do not expect to have a personal/home life. Even if not on-call personnel will be called unexpectedly in evenings, weekends, holidays, etc. You may be asked to take a laptop with you on vacation. There is no long-term planning at the system level to coordinate release deadlines for the larger projects. Development groups then compete for technical resources which causes frustration when multiple project managers are trying to have their releases pushed out simultaneously. If you are a new hire you must have strong technical skills and the ability to troubleshoot complex systems with little or no documentation to help. A lot of knowledge was lost in 2018 with the contract change, and the few people who remain are so swamped with work that they have very little time for knowledge transfer. Unfortunately competent new hires tend to go elsewhere after 6-12 months, right about as they're getting trained and productive on the systems.

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Synergy BIS Response
5y
Thank you for leaving your review on Synergy—we’re sorry to hear it was not a pleasant experience for you. As a government contractor, Synergy’s work hours and environment are largely dictated by our customers (the government agencies that we support). This contract is mission-critical, sustaining systems that must remain in production 24/7 as they support our military in active service around the world. Depending on the project, that does require some staff (including management) to be in an on-call rotation during “off-hours.” If you are considering a position with Synergy, please discuss the core hours and on-call requirements before interviewing. Not all positions have these requirements. While we can agree that the work is demanding, many of our staff find that challenge to be exciting and even motivating! Of course, though, no one likes to be in a situation where the assignments are so overwhelming that you never get ahead. We completely agree that the initial transition into this particular contract was a huge hurdle with an almost impossible deadline, and that some of the decisions we had to make during that time were far less than ideal. We’ve been transparent about that with the team there and have learned many lessons that will be very helpful should we ever face a similar situation. That’s probably where you observed some “butts in chairs” hiring decisions that had to be made early on. But thankfully, most of those inexperienced hires have settled into a productive regimen and some have become star players on our team! Most who have remained on the team would agree that the culture has evolved into a manageable environment, and we are able to bring on quality additions to the team as needed.

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