What do you get if you buy up all the competition? The answer is, a customer base who have no choice and a parent company who doesn't need to innovate.
Management are under qualified and out of touch. The CEO is fixated on getting staff back to the office, and growth through M&A. Companies that are acquired seem to undergo a cultural decline due to lack of effective integration or support. Senior management seem unable or unwilling to affect a productive and efficient work environment, instead spending time posturing around the office or going on work junkets. The culture is best described as "corporate America".
Teams work in silos, and cross team communication is basically non-existent. Staff and lower level management are left to figure everything out ad-hoc, without proper documentation or support.
Retention is a major issue. The good staff invariably leave, adding to the disruption. Long term staff just seem to be on autopilot. If you're someone who is striving for professional growth, this place is a dead end. Asking for career growth opportunities doesn't seem to yield anything. Organic growth is not a focus. Attempting to drive continuous inprovement is met with sandbagging from peers who don't want to have to work any harder than absolutely necessary. It's the best company to retire at because you can just put your feet up and do the bare minimum.
The recently acquired Allocate Software has a large offshore contingent in eastern Europe. This is the Finance, Development and IT hub. The CEO is openly excited about that - somehow massive offshoring is a good thing, but staff are also most effective when they work together in the same office...go figure. Most of the roles offshored to eastern Europe are to the detriment of the rest of the business, who have to try to work cross-continent or cross-time zone. The business structure as a result, is regional product deployment teams in Western countries, who spend half their time struggling to get what they need from the offshored departments in the East. This also causes career stagnation because roles are tied to geographies. So if you're in the West, in Finance, Dev or IT you've got a glass ceiling above you.
