The place has a weird vibe because they want you to feel like a full time employee while literally paying you by the minute. Most employees are contractors so there's no health insurance, PTO, 401k, or any other benefits. It feels like you are being taken advantage of...because you are.
However, my biggest problem was the dishonesty and the complete disregard for my contract.
It started off on an odd note. I applied to the job with a rate that was within their own posted range. Then after going through the entire interview process, they told me the pay range was a mistake and asked if I was willing to start at a lower rate.
HR offset the news by telling me a wonderful tale about how my 6 month contract would almost certainly be extended, and at that point they could give me the 10% they were paying to the company I was hired through. In fact, I was told that the end date was, "simply a reminder to transition you into our system, Gusto!"
Then about halfway through my contract I got pulled into a surprise meeting with the COO. He said they ran out of work, blaming it all on the client, and I was told to stop working immediately. They didn't want to off-board me, and he would give me weekly status updates (spoiler alert: he emailed me the following week and I never heard from him again).
I became unemployed overnight. It was also right before the holidays which was a nice touch.
Even worse was the fact that I was the only developer that was sidelined. The company hired too many developers at once for the project I was on (another management problem I won't even get into), and I assumed we all got put on hold temporarily since they "ran out of work." But I still had access to everything, so I could see that the other devs were still working full days. Even the dev hired after me was still working. There were comments in Slack from PM's saying things like "plenty of tickets on the board for the devs to pick up!"
I looked at the Jira board frequently over the next few months and it was always full of tickets. It felt absolutely horrible to watch everyone working while I'm lied to and wondering how I'm going to pay my rent.
Even better was when I was searching for a new job and saw them post my position while my contract was still technically active.
I would understand if I was a bad employee, but I am good at what I do and I worked really hard for them. So I'm not sure why I was singled out and screwed over, but this was the worst experience of my 15 year career.
FYI, at the time of this review my contract was scheduled to end over two weeks ago. This place is so poorly run that I still have access to everything and have not heard a word from anyone. It's been 3 months. They haven't even bothered to officially end my contract.
