Argo Data Reviews

Pros

From my personal experience ARGO is an awesome company to work for. I had something horrible happened in my life and they helped in everything they could and did it from the heart. Also they allow you to do your job and do not pressure you at all, as long as you do you job and meet the deadlines. Opportunity for rapid promotion. Great management.

Cons

Data sharing and resources for gathering information are very limited, many of the management has been there as long as the newest team members and there is not a lot of people that you can go for help in certain areas of the company since the code is very ARGO specific.

Pros

Management is largely hands off and gives a lot of autonomy to developers. Getting work done on time and meeting ARGO's not hard to meet standards will keep management off your back unless a customer is involved. Then, I have to say good luck, buddy.

Developers with goals to quickly become a tech lead or project manager at least in role will find ARGO very desirable despite only potentially being recognized for their efforts. Leadership experience is invaluable regardless if your salary currently reflects it or not.

ARGO openly admits that there is a HR disaster and that employees are leaving faster than an exodus out of Egypt during biblical times now that the economy is recovering. ARGO has attempted to do a lot with hiring an armada of HR specialists and drones while also revamping an employee management program.

Like another poster stated, ARGO is rolling in money, and constantly reports double digit growths despite having high turnover and mediocre quality products. Strong financials should translate to stability. I don't think anyone has to worry about ARGO going out of business any time soon. Somewhat high stability and amazing revenue growth.

ARGO's sales team is amazingly talented, and if you have a chance to work with their team; I would go for it. They line up so much new business and constantly identify new untapped markets that it is no wonder that ARGO has so many new products and not enough people to staff them with. They are also unbelievably knowledgeable, well connected, and skilled at selling to banks.

Open door policy. You can ask anyone for anything even if you don't know enough to ask the right questions or know who is the right person to ask. Heck, go knock on the CEO's door if you are an entry level employee; heck, you may even be rewarded for doing so. "Bravery" is actually something they look for in promoting their developers. It's right in the docs if you don't believe me.

High turnover creates a lot of opportunity. Relatively junior employees get saddled with more responsibility once their superiors leave and if they call pull it off they can fast track in the company. Depending on the type of person you are I suppose this could not be a positive. If you are an ambitious/passionate opportunity seeker who wants to sacrifice their social life and time to jump start their career by becoming a tech lead in 2-3 year or a PM in 4-5, ARGO is your heaven. I personally know many people who did the same. If you are a responsibility/power addict ARGO will satisfy your soul as long as money isn't the main motivator for you. Heck, I have known defacto tech lead with 1-2 years total experience that are paid the same and have the same title as their peers. I do admit you will gain very valuable experience that's transferable if you do manage to pull this off.

Low involuntary turnover. Firings are at a rarity at ARGO for devs. Most of them are aimed at PMs, tech leads, and the occassional programmer who angers the customer.

Cons

Low pay. Many leave ARGO to 20-30% more money elsewhere. If you are practically acting like a PM or tech lead this pay difference is probably even worse. Meager compensation intensifies once you start to make it to the 5-7 year mark in your career.

Certain technologies are non-transferable and proprietary, I strongly disagree that you can't learn any transferable tech skills at ARGO. If you really want them aim to get on the Software Engineer team/track, I know several who have made that transition and work exclusively with current gen languages.

You have to be insanely driven and motivated to succeed at ARGO people who simply follow orders or need structure/guidance will be largely ignored.

Low to medium-low quality standards and rarely disciplined for bad quality work unless the customer happens to bring it up. You can practically break things constantly and not be able to code yourself a "Hello World" statement much less a box and still survive at ARGO with little consequences. I've worked here for a long time, and I have only known 3 developers get fired for incompetence and probably seen probably 150+ leave willingly that I knew of.

High turnover and a culture that knowledge is in people. Thankfully, this was slowly changing in the last year I was there. Well, at the knowledge sharing part -- turnover seems to be getting worse.

Poor performers rarely get fired. For the most part they are ignored, and thankfully few of them get promoted quickly.

Basic quality tenets like code reviews and thorough regression testing are scarcely practiced. ARGO seriously needs to force all teams to do a minimum to ensure quality. Heck even some teams don't even have source control because it takes too long to set up.

Insanely variable hours. You can work yourself to death at ARGO on certain projects and practically have nothing to do on others.

Some managers are non-technical as the customer and are incredibly daft. Others are rock stars.

Recognition seems very variable and depends mainly on the strength of your boss. Have a powerful one and be a top performer and you are golden. Otherwise, you are out of luck, Joe.

The Chinese food in the cafe is downright bad, which is quite strange considering who owns it.

Toilet paper is far too thin and sand paper like. If you are having one of those days.... it won't be pretty.

Forget about working from home or much flexibility in work schedules/lunch breaks.

Feedback is inconstantly scheduled, and it isn't rare to go for months without feedback or even a year without a formal review. Took me 18 months to get my first formal review and about 4-5 months to get any kind of feedback what so ever. Promotions sometimes need to be demanded with confidence -- soft-spoken gear heads are sidelined at ARGO.

Fair feedback depends on your manager and your performance is strongly influenced by your peers.

Soft skills are valued over tech skills, and you need to be able to be seen as a leader to break past the first three titles. This is really only a negative for certain people. I think many companies value soft skills like they should, but at ARGO it is not only essential, but you will be forced into management/leadership if you want to get past the first few titles. Only at ARGO will you have a charismatic smooth talking visionary leader who could sell ice to Eskimos fast track when he has questionable tech skills at best.

Sometimes ARGO turns off the AC during after hours. That's totally awesome if you have to work late, and don't want to VPN. I understand the desire to cut back on costs, but working late is bad enough as it is.

ARGO why the hell did you downgrade cake day to cupcakes. Does a cake really cost that much?

Somewhat stiff banker culture

Advice to Senior Management

Pay your people more, value quality over quantity, and embrace new technologies. Modernize the culture of the company. Solve your turnover problem so you can afford to fire more low performers. Align salary better to responsibility levels. Tech leads and people who act as PM should be paid a minimum salary higher than people with lateral titles. Go an extra step and allow work from home, possibly tuition reimbursement and other continuing education incentives like paying for Java certs/ community college programming courses.

Seriously bring cake day back. How much money do you really save by offering cupcakes?

Buy aloe coated, quadruple ply, quilted luxury toilet paper for all ARGO bathrooms.

Been at better and worse places. ARGO is not the nightmare some of these people are painting it as. If you can put up with the many annoyances, ARGO offers rare opportunities at gaining valuable leadership experience at an early point in your career.

Pros

Exposure to customers, great opportunity to learn about software project management, enterprise software and Microsoft technologies

Cons

Performance review process is very loosely defined, and better off throwing out the entire process than promising employees something that it isnt

Technology is very outdated and a huge productivity and motivation killer. For someone who got into software because they love technology, this is a real bitter pill to swallow

Pros

Friendly people, great benefits, and it's a dynamic software company that is a leader of the industry that it's in.

Cons

You have to willing to take their training classes to learn about different industries.

Advice to Senior Management

They need a new website.

Pros

Some managers are understanding on time off
Nice building with onsite gym facilities as well as a cafe
Management is starting to become more "modern", allowing for casual fridays, flexible schedules, sponsering team sports

Cons

Middle Management is the biggest problem! Managers do not treat all employees equally
Raises are difficult to come by and usually do not add up to much - the general idea is that you do not deserve a "cost of living" increase, you must go above and beyond to get a raise.
The turnover rate is extremely high

Advice to Senior Management

Upper management needs to pay more attention to middle management (they are making a lot of mistakes that no one seems to notice). Also, the hiring process needs to be better. Seems as they are not really paying attention to the employees they are hiring; they should be more selective.
They should fire the slackers - there are a lot of them (middle management are allowing them to get away with doing nothing while overloading the "good" employees), they are bringing overall morale down. In order to help with retention, overall salaries should be increased, also each group should have a chance at getting raises (not just managers or programmers).

Pros

You can work as many hours as you like - the company is happy to let you work yourself to an early grave. The office space is nice and the location is good. There are so many dysfunctional managers as to be almost comical.

To young people coming out of college: Avoid Argo at all costs. Technology is dated and, unless all you want is a job on your resume, you won't learn much new here.

To seasoned professionals thinking about joining the company: Be prepared to run into a huge wall of incompetence and political games coming from the fifth floor. There are a few managers who run the place like it was their own personal playground - and they're like pit vipers - you will get bit. Think long and hard before you join and ask yourself if playing politics is what you really want to do.

Cons

The company is always short-staffed - no matter when you ask, they always need between 30 and 60 new people. Some of that is because the company is growing, or branching out into new areas, but the vast majority is because people leave Argo like it was a fast-food outlet. Seriously, turnover is massively high, especially when you consider that the people leaving are highly skilled professionals, not just quickly hired off the street.

Advice to Senior Management

Slaughter a few sacred cows and start demanding that your managers actually take responsibility for their work instead of throwing younger folks under the bus every time something happens. Given the constant shortage of qualified people, the place is always in disarray. Maybe you should wake up and realize that many of your people simply don't like how you do business. No one is going to hold their breath, however, waiting for that day.

Pros

-Incredible strategic direction by executive & senior management
-Great financials translates directly to high stability
-Lots of opportunity for advancement and growth
-Upper management is very accessible for even the lowliest peon
-Poised to explode in growth over the next several years due to recent product success
-Nice office
-Exceptional co-workers
-Customer interfacing

A lot of the posts here seemed very uninformed and/or bitter in their complaints about management. I've worked for companies that had horrible management and ARGO is definitely not one of them. Upper Management is highly intelligent, capable, and very approachable - this is something you really won't find anywhere else.

The financial success of the company translates directly to growth which means there are a *lot* of opportunities for anyone who wants to go after them. ARGO is all about results and if you're a badass then they not only want to keep you, but they want to promote you. On the flip side, people that can't pull their own weight will get fired without a second thought* - this is great for achievers, who can't stand slackers, and bad for slackers themselves.

The people are great, regardless of department, as ARGO manages to draw in a lot of talent through their recruiting process.

Customer interfacing is a big part of most development roles and if you want that kind of experience it's a great place to go.

Bottom line - this place is growing fast, has a lot of opportunity, and will be a wonderful place to work in another 5 years after it's been 'modernized' a bit more.

*developers don't seem to get fired - I'll cover this in the Cons

Cons

-Environment is a little stiff, especially for a place that recruits out of college. Needs significant modernization (this is apparently in progress, but progress is slow)
-Pay is on the lower end - especially after a few years.
-Raises seem to only come with promotions; no tuition reimbursement
-Poor developers don't seem to get fired due to resource constraints.
-Working with a proprietary technology is very bad if you want to develop your resume
-Long hours are pretty common

There's a major problem with retention at ARGO, which is mostly related to a) the technology; devs are scared to get multiple years of experience in some proprietary markup language b) the pay is a bit low, especially when the job market is improving and employees are seeing 20-30% raises for hopping to another job which ALSO uses a relevant technology like Java or C#

The owner is very conservative and as a result the company environment is a little stiff.

Developers seem to be immune to getting fired due to resource constraints - we have some seriously slacker developers that don't do anything all day long and still get paid. This is demoralizing for those of us actually working hard on whatever project we're assigned to.

Poor management of expectations, over-promising to customers, and letting customers get away with too much scope creep results in frequent long hours.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior/Executive management,

Pros: We have great people, and a lot of talent from the ground up. Max, you've recruited some amazing people for your senior management - empower them to help bring this company up to the 21st century.

Happy employees are productive employees.

Cons:
Retention is a big problem for two main reasons - technology and compensation. Neither are cheap to address, but it may be worth it in the long haul to migrate to another language platform, or assess rankings and bump up compensation when appropriate.

Everyone will always say, behind closed doors, that they're underpaid. But when we're losing good people to higher paying jobs on a steady basis, we might end up saving money in the long term by bumping that salary up 10% - rather than replacing with a new hire that will take 6 months to significantly contribute to a project. (not to mention the workload increase in the vacuum of X person leaving)

Other environmental factors should be considered too - casual day was a great start, but tuition reimbursement and working from home should be looked at. Let's celebrate the small wins more often.

Oh, and on behalf of those of us who actually care about our jobs and work hard, fire the slackers. You know who they are, and they damage morale.

Pros

Lower level managers try to provide a good working environment for their employees by being flexible and generous. They do this in conflict with corporate policies.

Cons

The company compelled every employee to sign an NDA stating they will never say anything bad about the company. Now or any time in the future. (version 7.01.2009)

Advice to Senior Management

Any advice which may be offered would (or could) be construed as having something disparaging to say about the company.

Pros

It's a good place for people to start their career. Also good clients to work with that may be difficult to find in other service vendors.

Cons

Software is old and many of the technical people who knew that software have left the firm. While the management approach probably worked with clients and employees at one time, cultures are changing and Argo hasn't changed with the times.

Advice to Senior Management

Management has always done things a certain way and that's the way it will be done. Argo seems to recruit some very good middle and senior management candidates, but they don't last very long.

Pros

ARGO is an established but fast growing software company in the space of financial solutions. Industry reputation and organizational financials are rock solid. Furthermore, software offerings in many areas leave ARGO without few competitive forces. There is also a growing spirit of openness and employee appreciation.

Cons

Compensation is well below average for a developer. The programming language is proprietary and skills are non-transferable.

Employees are not properly valued by some in management. Numerous times I have seen an experienced person walk out the door. The though is that everyone is replaceable but I don't think they see the true cost.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to do a better job of demonstrating that their job is to support the employees.

Also at the executive management level there are a couple of people who have made a living on talking out of the side of their mouth or throwing other people under the bus. When you have these people in leadership positions, it causes tremendous moral problems.