rating for Softscape
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May 28, 2009
See 17 more ratings for Softscape!
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Re: Not even worth 1 Star posted on May 28, 2009 12:24 PM
This can be found with an easy google
http://www.vault.com/survey/employee/Softscape-Career-outlook-96016.html
Business Outlook Survey
Manager The outlook of the company is mixed in the sense that the owners will profit if they sell before they get caught up in past scandals. There are very few besides the inner circle of employees that stand to profit. The company's association with several Connecticut state agencies was it's bread and butter for awhile through 2001. If you recall, Governor Rowland was in office and Softscape lobbied his IT Chief to get a leg up on any competition in the state. We know what happened to Rowland. He resigned in disgrace on June 22, 2004. The company also plucked Terry Borjeson from his state position in CT to further entrench themselves in the multi-million dollar gravy train know as the State of Connecticut. There were several tense meetings with other government agencies from other states who were continually displeased with the product that Softscape created. Instead of having productive problem solving meetings, the brass at the company would try to gloss things over and offer the customer an expensive lunch. I truly believed then that the company's poor reputation would finally catch up to the arrogant indifference that the company had towards existing customers. The State of Arkansas (Pulaski County) is the most recent victim to Softscape's failed promises. 'Pulaski County has paid $451,196.52 for a software system that does not work,' Mankin-Mitchell wrote in a letter to Softscape, Inc. President, Hank Watkins. Such a quote makes me wonder how many 'software' licenses they cooked up to get that figure of $451,196.52. The company also had trouble meeting payroll and expenses and had no clear understanding of when it was fiscally responsibly to expand its operations or increase it's staff. In order to save money they had a common method of firing salespeople when they were due to be paid and would also not pay them on their commissions. They would never put anything in writing when it came to requesting a rate of commissions on a sale. They used their own 'variable' rate. The variable being they pay you what and when they want or they don't pay you at. There were at least two former sales representatives that were involved in a class action lawsuit and I believe there are more. It is my understanding that the suit is asking for more than $75k. There are several other legal problems that the company continues to deal with. It will likely be a matter of when, not if, a State Attorney General's office of consumer affairs gets a complaint from a bilked state agency. Most employees, if they could speak freely, would express there unhappiness with the company and how it runs. It doesn't take more than a few days, or weeks at the most, to understand that you made a big mistake accepting Softscape's offer of employment. The new job search begins once you've come to this realization inside of the Wayland office.
| scores in this rating | |
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development process | |
| clear requirements | unrated |
| design and planning | unrated |
| quality assurance | unrated |
| automated testing | unrated |
| peer review | unrated |
| development environment | unrated |
| development hardware | unrated |
| physical workspace | unrated |
| infrastructure and support | unrated |
| issue tracking | unrated |
| source control | unrated |
| product quality | unrated |
culture | |
| cultivation of creativity | unrated |
| mitigation of risk | unrated |
| reasonable workload | unrated |
| prevention of crunch time | unrated |
| hitting deadlines | unrated |
| taking responsibility | unrated |
| development autonomy | unrated |
| keeping ego in check | unrated |
compensation | |
| salary | unrated |
| health coverage | unrated |
| paid time off | unrated |
| snacks | unrated |
| other perks | unrated |
organization | |
| advancement opportunities | unrated |
| employee retention | unrated |
| hiring process | unrated |
| quality of development management | unrated |
| quality of upper management | unrated |
| quality of developers | unrated |
| team-to-team communication | unrated |
| internal team communication | unrated |
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general | |
| location | unrated |
| nearby food | unrated |
| business model | unrated |
| cool technology | unrated |
| vision and strategy | unrated |
| warm fuzzy feeling | unrated |
| overall |  |
preferences | |
| casual dress code | unrated |
| use of Free Software | unrated |
| development of Free Software | unrated |
| use of GNU/Linux | unrated |
| use of Mac OS | unrated |
| use of Solaris | unrated |
| use of Windows | unrated |
| use of BSD | unrated |
| use of Python | unrated |
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| use of Ruby | unrated |
| use of Lisp | unrated |
| use of Java | unrated |
| use of C# | unrated |
| use of Objective-C | unrated |
| use of C | unrated |
| use of C++ | unrated |
| use of PHP | unrated |
| use of ASP | unrated |
| use of legacy languages | unrated |