Allen Systems Reviews

Pros

Good products, inherently interesting work, great coworkers (those who remain), 4 day work week (not everyone loves this but I do -- no more blue Mondays).

Compensation is not terribly awful.

Cons

Uncommunicative, authoritarian, distrustful, disempowering management. Company culture is risk-averse, CYA, unadventuresome, hostile to innovation.

Either everything about the way successful companies -- e.g., Google, Microsoft, etc. -- manage software development is wrong or ASG is wrong. I think the results speak for themselves. Google, Microsoft, etc. are growing while to all appearance, ASG is on a death march and some good products are likely to perish with it, which will be a shame.

Compensation is not especially wonderful.

Advice to Senior Management

Management seems to believe (incorrectly) that its employees are shirkers and need to be beaten into submission. Management seems to believe that its employees have no ideas worth listening to. Management needs to disabuse itself of both of these false beliefs.

Pros

Great group of people with a passion to produce excellent content. Well organized HR department. Management cares for the employees.

Cons

Technical aspects of the company somewhat disorganized and development of current products often suffers to the distraction of new partnerships and acquisitions which don't always pan out.

Advice to Senior Management

Great energy and excitement put forth into acquiring / partnering with new companies, but the focus drops quickly after the new car smell wears off. Need to continue focus.

Pros

Decent group of people if you don't get sucked into the paranoia. However, back-stabbing is often 'encouraged' and expected.

Cons

Culture of paranoia and ineffectiveness all to feed the owner.

Advice to Senior Management

the expert HR team hired experts to lead their departments. Now let them do their jobs.

Pros

It's very easy to get time off approved and most of the peple are very nice.

Cons

I have to agree with all of the negative reviews posted here, they are exactly correct. This could have been a great company but it is being very poorly managed.

Pay raises are usually minimal 2%-3% and there are no bonuses. This would be bad enough in itself but they are dangled in front of us like a carrot on a stick and then they disappear when it comes time to deliver. There have been years when there were no raises at all in order to finance an acquisition. The worst was when every employee was required to submit an essay praising AA in his goal of turning ASG into a billion dollar company. The entries would be judged by M&M Allen and the 'winners' would get a $50,000 bonus. Needless to say that never happened.

We are now going on 2 years of a 20% pay reduction and we have been told that we will not be returning to a 5 day week until another acquistion is completed.

Professional advancement and opportunities are based solely on internal friendships and otherwise do not exist at ASG. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

Department level management varies from very skilled and involved to apathetic and uncommunicative. The atmosphere in some departments is really, really bad and for the most part employee morale is ignored by management. The advice to senior management by one of the earlier posters to "...keep track of the employees that are not giving 100%" is very telling of the overall attitude of management towards the employees. Blame them for the problems and ignore fixing them.

Sorry to sound so negative because AA is a smart guy who has acquried an interesting mix of products with a solid customer base.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't go buy a 45 million dollar yacht when your employees are working on a 20% pay reduction and collecting partial unemployment and then blame it on the bad economy.

Pros

Decent product mix of software solutions for distributed and mainframe environments. Very strong in content/document management, metadata mgt, applications discovery and portfolio mgt, and scheduling.

Cons

Not a well known player outside of the big 4 to many top companies. Relatively low wages compared to our main competition.

Advice to Senior Management

Use your best customers as Beta sites for testing and exploring new technologies to expose ASG to the world and increase references and sales.

Pros

If you need a paycheck.....

Cons

Top down, company has no respect for employees

Advice to Senior Management

Learn how to properly motivate productively

Pros

ASG is a great place to work if you are self motivated and a hard worker. If you rely heavy on managerial direction and expect guaranteed raises and bonus w/out proof of effort than this is not the place for you. Over the last 4 years ASG has provided a solid platform for me to work hard and create my own success. The worldwide financial downturn has placed stress on everyone in every company from the top all the way down, but i sincerely look forward to the return to normal business with ASG.

Cons

I have not personally had any negative experiences since working for ASG. Many employees are struggling with the 4 day work week. Although it has caused some financial difficulties, I have taken full advantage of the extra personal time.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to motivate in a positive manor and praise those who are working hard for ASG.
We all have to be on the top of our game to ensure the success of the company - so take note of the negative employees who are not putting in 100% as they are causing far more damage than good.

Pros

It's easy to be a big fish in the small pond of ASG, and commonly one can find people at elevated positions which they would never get in more world-class companies. Depending on the office, people usually have a lot of autonomy in how they plan their days and it's not necessary to give up your personal life. Starting salaries are generally quite good. But be forewarned, you will not see an increase in pay unless you leave the company and return later.

Cons

Each year, around 14% of companies get new bosses, yet ASG has been stuck with the same guy for over 25. Essentially, ASG is the owner Art Allen's vanity project. He flies all over the planet apparently producing very little in sales or profit, meeting customers that have already been vetted by local people and claiming responsibility for their successes. Art Allen is basically a sales guy whose company has outgrown him. If this were a public company, he would have been fired long ago, or limited to head a sales division where he would be most effective.

Make no mistake, ASG is not a software company, at least not in the normal sense. There is little push to innovate or keep its products competitive. It's business model is to purchase smaller software companies, fire most of the workers, then attempt to sell the software and live off of the maintenance and a few new sales while the product dies a slow death. As a general indicator, the overall ratio of developers to products is in the ballpark of 1 developer to 2 products. So in the IT software market, ASG is more akin to a dollar store than a top-notch software vendor.

This sales-only approach to software has permeated the company culture. There is no viable long-term strategy. There is no career development, since everyone but Art Allen is expendable. There is no attempt to retain people and accordingly there are no pay raises. The mandatory pay cuts haven't helped, especially when people are still expected to produce 5-day weeks worth of work.

Advice to Senior Management

Look at the top of the organization for the source of your problems, and notice the systemic failures instead of blaming your people. Try retaining good people. Generally, those who can leave do, and thus there is almost no organizational memory in the company.

Pros

Nice place to work, nice people.

Cons

Total lack of respect of employees from the owner. Promises, promises but never delivers.

Advice to Senior Management

I wanted a full time job with chances for advancement, pay and bonus's.There is nothing like that in the company.

Pros

There are none. Unless of course you're looking for a job to pass the time and collect a paycheck then this is the place for you.

Cons

No incentive for promotions, no bonuses or even a 2-3% increase in pay to cover inflation. Company has downsized 20-25% with existing employee's having to take a 20% pay cut. No sign of any improvement any time soon. Company is full of promises but never deliver. Lack of direction and lack of respect shown to its employee's. Everyone is treated as disposible with random layoff's constantly taking place. Many of the talented staff have moved on and I doubt it'll be long before the rest follow. Don't waste your loyalty on this company, it'll be the worst descision you'll ever make.

Advice to Senior Management

What's the point? They don't listen.