Pros
- Met some really great people, and there are some great minds if you are willing to search for them... few and very far between, though - I will admit, I had a clear career growth opportunity path at Netsmart, but that was more a factor of having a great manager vs Netsmart having clearly defined career outlooks
Cons
I'll list out some specifics, below, but I am starting with a synopsis of why I think this company is a very poor company for early-mid career persons to work at. For starters, the company is so far behind technologically. They somehow think acquiring a bunch of companies with ridiculously poorly built monoliths will lead to success. What's worse is that they expect these poorly built monoliths to somehow integrate with one another. And then, they lay off or allow* all the associates who know the most about each of their respective products to leave. What we ended up with is a bunch of monoliths that no one currently at the company knows anything about, and the kicker... PROMISES MADE TO CLIENTS TO HAVE X DONE ON DAY Z... How overwhelmingly frustrating. The next very frustrating thing to tackle is just their overall willingness to lose very valuable personnel. This, in itself, is a problem, but the problem is pretty well rooted in a number of things such as compensation, work-life balance, lack of support, and the list goes on. I'll touch on each of these, next... Compensation... Netsmart does NOT pay well. I got a pretty substantial raise in 2021 and was still being compensated 15% less than the average in the area I live in. I was happy and angry at the same time... And that's a pretty weird mix of emotion, let me tell ya.... Work-life balance... oof, this is probably the most frustrating item for me to talk about. There were weeks on end where I would work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week... And it wasn't an uncommon occurrence. It was basically a month on, a month off. It was devastating, at times, for me, my family, and really anyone who came in contact with me on the "right" day. To make matters worse, due to so many good engineers leaving, the on-call cycle just kept dwindling and, at a certain point, me and my peers were on-call once every three weeks. One entire week on 24/7 on-call, then two weeks off, then another entire week on 24/7 on-call, then two weeks off. Absolutely ridiculous. Lack of support... This somewhat relates to everything else, but there are some things I would like to touch on: Netsmart has a weird issue with forward momentum and very much prefer to be reactive in place of proactive. Individuals or managers who want to future proof anything are either met with an un-winnable fight or an absolute no, on the spot. It's a bit of a joke, actually. So, how does this tie back into lack of support? Well, if I decided that I wanted to make something easier for the future of the particular product that I was working, I'd quite literally have to do it on my "own" time. There was never a "Oh, you're team was once 10 associates, and it is now 2 associates? Let me help you and add extra resources to your team so you don't go crazy!" Nope.. None of that. Just a big middle finger to all of us. When I started in the office I work in, there was close to 80 associates. When I left, there was around 25. - VERY poor work life balance - Job description and actual job differed significantly - Layoffs and people leave with no backfills for months, or ever - Older technology/unwillingness to extend beyond their limited knowledge - I'm a SWE... why the heck would you buy me the CHEAPEST macbook you could possibly buy??? Sounds petty, but I had to do 99% of all my work in VM's that were recurring costs.... SEE!!! REACTIVE, NOT PROACTIVE!!! - When covid started, they sent an email basically saying, "We aren't covering a penny of any of your at home office supplies... kick rocks, losers" ... What an absolute joke - Not a competitive salary, at all - No bonuses - No equity - Oh yea, they decided to wipe out everyone's saved up PTO and switch us all to a flexible PTO structure... And they gave us 3 weeks notice that they were doing this... Right after COVID.... You know, the year where NO ONE was capable of using their PTO, and EVERYONE had a bunch of saved up PTO because of it... slimy... THIS was my last straw, but having written all this out, I am genuinely concerned about how it got all the way here... Last straw should have been a couple years prior, but I was a weak man. Wanna know something funny? They have this hashtag littered everywhere at Netsmart... #peopleMatter ... Why is this funny, you ask? Well, if you've gotten this far and read through it all, it's rhetorical. If you fast-forwarded to the bottom of my monologue, head right back up to the top, read through, and when you find yourself back here, you'll understand why #peopleDontMatter and why the private equity firms pockets at Netsmart do matter. #disgruntledEmployee <- That's an inside joke at netsmart... seriously... * By "allow," I mean they just watch them walk away without trying to keep them around.
