Compare Toptal vs gTeam FZ

Pros

I enjoy the sense of community within the Toptal network.

Cons

Difficult to piece together enough projects to be full time.

Pros

I love being able to work from home, or a coffee shop, or while visiting extended friends/family in a different country, etc. There is no office to work in, which changes the culture dramatically. ... At IBM, for example, a few people were remote, so they missed all of the hallway conversations or the impromptu architecture discussions at lunch, etc. At gTeam, everybody is remote, so there's nothing to miss. All of our whiteboards are virtual and we eat lunch with our families in our own kitchens. Honestly, the pay is pretty great too. I suspect my previous employers paid a similar amount for me, including buildings, keeping the lights on, HR staff, company events, computers, various perks, etc. But now all of that money goes to me, and I don't need to beg somebody for a better laptop or nicer chair. This is a much better system. I also like the freedom I'm given. Granted, I have a senior job in management, but I'm never forced into stupid architectures or deploying on some silly mainframe/Winblows like I've had to deal with at other companies. Perhaps said another way: the political BS seems very low here. We only argue about what's best for our clients, not about angering some VP/vendor somewhere. I know some people see this as a con, but I love it that they don't keep under performers. You can't suck and stay here. You can make mistakes, that's fine, but you can't keep making the same mistakes over and over.

Cons

I sometimes miss going out for greasy burgers with folks on Fridays. If I had a magic wand, I'd make the recruiting process a little more fair for people who don't get hired. I see that some... people here think gTeam gets free work out of people in the Trial phase of the recruiting process. I can clear that up - that's absolutely not the case. They get senior people to solve the coding challenges and then compare incoming recruits to the known answers. There's nothing part of the trial that they don't already have a database of answers for. With that said, people who don't pass the 3 day trial don't get paid. Years ago, they used to pay every candidate. Then some Chinese company put 100 people through the trial with absolutely terrible submissions just to make the 100 x 3 days pay, so management put a stop to that. There needs to be a middle ground though. On that same token, because this company's completely virtual, they get 10x more con-artist trying to steal money than any company I've ever seen. I can understand that - it's more tempting when you don't have to walk in the building and let people get to know you. The downside is that gTeam has much higher security standards, which naturally get in the way sometimes. I can't blame them for it, but it is annoying.