CGI Group Reviews

Pros

Good benefits, Stock value has rose over the past few years, some cool peers. No office politics and a decent social club in the NYC office.

Cons

Bland industry, does not give you skills that will make you competitive in the industry. Annual reviews are worthless and will not give you leverage when trying to negotiate salary increases.

Pros

Benefits are very good
Bonus are good
Salary are high
Good training from the start
Team leader support
Well structured

Cons

Lack of communication from upper management except for corporate communication
Repeted tasks can become boring after a while
Hard to maintain motivation
Job not quite interesting
Specific rules: Upper management not able to adapt and understand special situation vs employee's objectives

Advice to Senior Management

More communicative with employees and show human relation skills. Could offer more opportunities within the company.

Pros

Location is good; Share purchase plan is good; Flexibility of work; Can work from remote even permanently (if that is of interest)

Cons

Foremost downside? Poor processes, or better, too much process for everything. This company is cumbersome such as those gigantic, messy, nightmarish firms like Bell, HydroQC or alike. I worked for Bell too: CGI is just the same. Such a mess that you will never be able to get it right from the first time. You learn by making mistakes and that is ok because everybody here does. Your manager will understand, or maybe will not because the moment could be tough.

Advice to Senior Management

I am shocked how poor the management of this company is. The technical workforce does not deserve this! I have left the company a week ago and I bet 10,000$ that nobody has read the feedback I have left for the management. Why? Well, they will never care. Tomorrow they probably will be elsewhere, at CGI or in another company (12% turnover this year: must be a record in the industry).
My job has been a nightmare from day one. No training, your manager has literally no idea of what your job is, just will assign you to manage some projects and will then ask you questions when it rains. Roles and responsibilites are very poorly defined. Nobody knows exactly who does what and most people plays around this lack of clarity. For project managers this is a nightmare. For other roles, it provides excuses to pass away the request to someone else. "Sorry, that is not my task to do" is what I heard from day one. Also, the project management office is completely useless: they pretend to control the situation by making us fill a ridiculous amount of documents on a periodic basis. Added value for the client:: zero. Or less, because this overhead actually detaches us from coordination work. But the management does not care: they care of reporting, not coordination and client satisfaction.
I thought I had touched the bottom at Bell: no! Project management at CGI is even worse. I am now with CN: now we talk project management! My advise to management: please pay a visit to CN and learn that a large company can operate in a lean way by cutting waste. Reduction of non value added activities, work duplication, processes shrank to the bone of the "just what is necessary" (less is more). It is not impossible, other companies did it.

I am sure some HR employees are posting here some fake reviews. I am seeing some enthusiastic reviews which smell fake. You do not hear satisfied people during lunch time in our food court.

I do not recommend this company to anyone. My son is now 22: I will make sure he leaves this company out of his search criteria.

Pros

excellent colleagues that work together to help customers even though morale is bad
compensation not bad
stock purchase plan

Cons

corporate greed demonstrated when increasing work hours, charging customers for the extra time but NOT compensating employees for the extra time they are forced to provide
expectation to work many hours above normal and on many projects simultaneously
non existent bench management to allow employees to have down time between projects to update skills and regenerate energy for next assignment
layoffs called "temporary" to avoid payment of severence
reduction of benefits
each business unit/dept operates in a silo....

Pros

CGI is multinational company. As a big company you have ability to relocate in a place of your choice and a possibility to grow.

Cons

Salaries are not as good as some other companies in the industry

Advice to Senior Management

My advice would be in order to attract more talented people, CGI need to increase its compensations to match the big players on the market!

Pros

Benefits, and it's one of the few non-contract jobs you can get in Edmonton

Cons

The "everyone has to do everything; we're like a small family-owned company" mentality. If I'm hired as a writer, I don't want to be coding or doing quality checks, I want to write. It's what I'm good at, and I enjoy it.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't advertise a job as one thing, then do bait & switch. If your staff on a project is all quitting because of one person, GET RID OF THE PROBLEM PERSON before all your staff jumps ship.

Pros

Manage work life balance, Share Purchase plan

Cons

Not many big projects, Respect from colleagues and management, leadership skills of senior management, no proper reviews and feedbacks.

Advice to Senior Management

Long way to go to compete with the bigger organizations

Pros

The company allows for flexible working hours and creates a good work / life balance. Colleagues are great to work with.

Cons

However in general the company does not follow IT best practices. And is becoming more heavy handed with it's management from Montreal. Too many broad strokes company wide.

Advice to Senior Management

Think "Penny wise and pound foolish." would have some merit and wisdom?
The bottom line is made up of the total cost of all actions taken. What's good for the short term can be very expensive in the long term.

Pros

flexibility to work from home

Cons

never knowing when you will be terminated because they are not making their quarterly numbers

Advice to Senior Management

instead of focusing all the time on the profit, invest a little more in the members, treat them with respect.

Pros

Office layout and location - Really good! Can do remote work (if that is what you want), Exposure to different client environement

Cons

there is a limited growth space available for an individual, and the technology advance possibility is also limited, and the project not that deep
Management considers that aiming at an increase of x% in revenues and (or) profits - without a clear view of how it will be achieved - is a 'plan'.
Excellent salaries for VP and some directors, anything below is peanut pay.

Negotiate hard for a good salary during your job interview because salary are next to NIL and profit sharing is only for VP s

No pension Plan

Advice to Senior Management

Stop thinking about the CGI stock and pushing employee to purchase them, it seems that is all CGI cares about, they couldn't care less about their members or their client