London Computer Systems

2.0

3. Feb. 2021

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CEO-Befürwortung

Geschäftsprognose

Pros

Preface: This review is from the perspective of someone with years of experience on the dev floor, and often working directly with various departments and leadership. Before you read forward, I advise you to shop for other offers before you accept a position here. LCS is a company that comes with opportunity for growth and experience. Over the last decade, they consistently hired fresh college graduates and interns for their work, with the occasional hire with more experience. Most software development companies come with layers of approval and bureaucracy before you can engage your skills into your work. This is not the case at LCS. You will get stuck on some silly management decisions that do not align with any latest trends or industry practices, but it is a great starting point for anyone looking to kick-start their career in various fields. Their culture is one that encourages a "family" atmosphere. It is easy to get engaged with your coworkers, both inside and outside the office. Most of the employees are very friendly and helpful.

Kontras

If you decide to interview or accept a job at LCS, there are a few things you should be aware of. LCS has suffered from growing too quickly. The company tripled in size in less than 5 years. With this, came growing pains that were never addressed. You will experience these growing pains more than anyone else. Some of this is described below. 1. You will get a low-ball offer on your salary. They will advertise, and defend, larger-than-average yearly salary raises in your annual review. This is true. However, be prepared to receive your review 6 months late every year. 2. You will be expected to work after hours once your experience grows and your capability to contribute increases. This can range from a couple of hours, to "crunch" time when management does not communicate expectations until their secret deadlines are missed. If you have heard software development horror stories of "crunch", this is very much a reality here. You will sacrifice your health before they budge on their deadlines. You will hear "we are growing at a steady clip" and "momentum" multiple times a year, with it never being attributed to you. 3. You will not receive any documentation or descriptive expectations for your work. It will be up to you to decipher requirements based on a story or a brief description, and be treated poorly if you did not meet said requirements. 4. There is a high chance you will end up working on legacy systems that are architected poorly and extremely rigid in their ability to change, without any automation to back you in validation or testing. If you do not end up working on legacy systems, you will be working on newer software that is built on top of legacy systems. You will not discover this until a production bug is introduced, and be expected to stay late to resolve the issue in a hotfix. 5. With a family "atmosphere" comes gossip, drama, and toxicity. While most are friendly and helpful, there are plenty of others who communicate in a way that will make you go home feeling like you aren't "part" of their "family". It is a vicious cycle, and one that you should be cautious of. 6. LCS is one of the few companies in this pandemic that has continuously been obsessed with their employees returning to the office. They do not allow for remote work, aside from a handful of days a year. To the point where employees got sick from COVID and the office was closed before pulling employees back into the office again. 7. LCS upper management is not transparent. You will find yourself and your managers completely unaware of the direction LCS is taking. Asking the wrong questions or speaking to others about your work could end with you in upper management offices. 8. LCS "outsourced" their recognition to their own employees rather than management. Your reward for hard work will be an LCS t-shirt, not a bump in salary, given through their recognition app. Making friends is the only way to get meaningful recognition and reward for going the extra mile.

Reaktion von London Computer Systems

Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback to us. As you mentioned in your comments, LCS has grown quickly and continues to adapt our policies and practices to meet our growing workforce. In fact, we are pleased that in 2020 (even during the ongoing pandemic) LCS hired 130+ new employees. It’s nice to be part of a strong and growing company! We strive to adapt and grow each day. In fact, based on feedback from our team members, we recently expanded our Business Analysis team to allow for better documentation of project requirements. Like any other company we do have deadlines. Our Software Developers create their own estimates including setting their own schedules and deadlines for each project. Our Agile software development process allows for Developers to have the flexibility they need, while working collaboratively to meet product deadlines that they have defined. We value our employees and work hard to create a culture that allows each of them to thrive. Recognition is a key part of that culture. Our employee’s receive recognition from management through celebrations of success at our monthly All Hands Meetings, through regular newsletters, end of year awards, and through a weekly email sent to all staff highlighting recognition received that week. Performance is also recognized through annual salary increases, which you mentioned are larger-than-average. A few years ago, many of our employees were asking for a better way to allow them to recognize their peers. This led to the implementation of our rewards and recognition platform. This program allows every employee in the company the opportunity recognize and reward their co-workers. In addition to LCS t-shirts, our employees can also cash in their rewards points for PTO days, restaurant/retail gift cards, and the latest technology. We recently surveyed all of our employees regarding this platform and they overwhelmingly have enjoyed having the ability to reward and recognize others. The safety of our employees is also important to us, which is why when the pandemic hit in March of 2020 we transitioned almost overnight to a 100% remote workforce. Over the last year, our employees have physically been in the office an average of 8 days each. Even now we continue to work remote to allow our employees the ability to stay healthy and manage their childcare needs. We see that you were employed at LCS for a long time (8-10 years) and we are sure that many of your coworkers miss you. As you said, it really is like family. We wish you the best of luck as you transition into your next role.

Be careful - Software Developer bei London Computer Systems: Mitarbeiterbewertung

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