Growth and Change but Still the Same
Pros
Number one reason to work at SPARC? The people. Without a doubt the people SPARC hires are the coolest, most down to earth, friendly, smart, and multi-talented people you'll ever meet. I'm still excited to get up and go to work every day and hang out with my co-workers and get things done. SPARC was recently acquired by Booz Allen Hamilton and just about everyone freaked out, but so far nothing has changed except the beer light has been green rather than yellow a lot more. All of the senior BAH people in our systems delivery division have been excited to bring SPARC culture to the rest of the division and have already started implementing some of the fringe things like bring your dog to work day. The buyout has brought SPARC actual career paths, training budgets, job security, world wide name recognition, and trimmed the cruft that has been leeching profit. The people. Scrum masters, requirements analysts, developers, human resources, the receptionist, the IT guys, the database people, the facilities guys, everyone LOVES their job and their role and it shows. Management actively seeks out, listens to, and acts upon feedback. Management, team leads, and employees all live the core values and put people first, have fun, communicate, hold each other accountable, encourage participation, remain agile, and always seek to leave people higher than when first approached. Have I mentioned the people, yet?
Cons
There are a handful bad apples that seem to be actively fighting to change SPARC's culture for the worse and that thankfully have not spoiled the bunch. SPARC had been working with Booz prior to the buyout on a large government project and Booz's hiring standards are not quite up to SPARC standards, but they have also been letting go of the worst of them. SPARC has been experiencing exponential growth over the last year and a half and with it has come a lot of growing pains like space (breaking ground on a new building and more parking early 2016), figuring out how to spread the experience around to all the new teams, figuring out how teams fit into the project, and keeping the kegerators full. It remains to be seen if Booz fulfills all of their promises.
