Paradigm reviews

3.8

80% would recommend to a friend

(163 total reviews)

Gayatri Narayan

54% approve of CEO

50% positive business outlook

Paradigm has an employee rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars, based on 163 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Paradigm employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

163 reviews
1.0
Mar 12, 2014

High stress, high turnover, lots of scapegoating.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There's a good health insurance plan, which is great because with all that stress and unpaid overtime, you're doubling your risk of a heart attack. Salaries would be only slightly sub-par if employees were actually working a 40-hour work week. Since WTS gets lots of practice in this area, they're great at picking out new hires. Employees are often bright creative hard workers who are passionate about what they do. Just don't get too attatched to your awesome co-workers, because they won't be there for long.

Cons

CEO thrives on conflict and a "pants on fire" level of urgency. Rules by fear and intimidation, threating to fire people if customer expectations aren't met. Since sales department often makes unrealistic promises, it's virtually guaranteed that that the company will let down their customers. And because of all the threats, employees are hesitant to take responsibility for projects, productivity is down despite long hours, and everyone is scrambling from one emergency to another, throwing each other under the bus in the process. Obviously, this results in an extremely high rate of turnover.

3.0
Feb 11, 2014

A Mixed Bag

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The company has a culture that includes many fun activities like a great holiday party (it has been at the Overture Center or Monona Terrace in the past), downtown Madison scavenger hunt (amazing!), and beer and snacks during major software releases. Great coffee and a casual dress code are big pluses. Benefits were "okay" but the leadership team has listened to feedback and improved them (for example, beefed up 401k's). Title-wise, the company offers numerous ways to climb the ladder internally. There are a good amount of skilled and fun employees - it's easy to make friends with co-workers and feel comfortable in the office. They will gladly support shifting folks around to different departments to find a better fit, and it seems to work out for both sides in cases I've observed. If you are useful, you can achieve a great amount of respect. The company has become successful and stable, and seems to be on the rise. This could be a good, low-pressure starting job in the software industry for a new college graduate.

Cons

Lots of turnover and growing pains. That means useful employees having to turn away requests for assistance from others just to get their own work done (or better yet, fulfill all requests and work a bunch of extra hours to get your tasks done!) The company is versions behind on their technology and software stack. The development and testing standards and techniques used lag a decade behind from where the leaders of the software engineering industry are. This has resulted in a brittle suite of software that is held together by twine, tape, and tons of business domain knowledge by a small group of people who have been there for a while. Employees fresh out of school won't know better, but experienced developers, testers, and support workers will be more frustrated than challenged sooner rather than later. Technology leadership has been filled with smart, hard-working folks, but not those with the character or desire to advance the company or innovate technically. This is the root cause of the massive stall in technological and process advancement. Many of these folks keep coming from Epic. Same old, same old. With some newer hires I have hope that this is changing for the better. There has been a subtle shift from being a "software" company to being a "consulting" company (perhaps not subtle - the CEO came out and said as much!). This translates into less client satisfaction, more nickel and diming, and more pressure on the software teams to fulfill requests no matter the cost. It is palpable. If you enjoy filling out timesheets and arguing internally over 15 minute billing increments for clients (up to several hours a week is spent on this), you'll be happy. The office vibe is a strange one. When there are some of the aforementioned fun activities, everyone cuts loose and has fun. On normal days, the office feels very quiet, stale, and corporate. Years back the company had more of a "startup" atmosphere, for better or worse. If you didn't come over from Epic or somewhere with that payscale, it will be a long, hard fight to get a fair salary. There does not seem to be a great understanding of actual market rates for certain positions within the company. Consequently, it becomes relatively common for employees to get a new title/promotion and NOT have a financial increase come along with it at the time.

1.0
Dec 27, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The company events and perks are there to camouflage the long hours of thankless work that will be extracted to cover up poor management. The managers have it great – just look at their review comments.

Cons

The PMO’s expectations are extremely rigid, highly bureaucratic, administratively burdensome, and applied with an immature no-deviation from PMO standards approach. The PMO processes are primarily in place to provide CYA for WTS due to the low quality of its software and/or the highly optimistic sales promises of the WTS sales team. You will work long hours with no reward. WTS (prima Dona) management will blame the PM when things go invariably wrong.

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Paradigm Response
12y
WTS Paradigm encourages all employees to provide feedback on how the company can create an engaging work environment and provide exceptional products and services to our customers. We take constructive feedback seriously and encourage you to contact the company directly so that we can fully understand your concerns and determine actionable steps that can be taken.
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