- When people disagree with you or a misunderstanding occurred, they will talk behind your back and disrespect you before others. Worst yet, others will tarnish your professional image if they feel they “saved” your project or bad mouth you after you leave the company. This type of behavior is workplace harassment because if people don’t like you they will disrespect or bully you. This can come from anyone: your teammates, upper management, peers who have nothing to do with your project, etc. A company that allows this behavior to continue is NOT a good place to work. It is a toxic workplace.
- There have been instances where people are recognized at Quarterly meetings but suddenly leave or are dismissed from the company.
- For short term projects out of the office, heavy hierarchical team makeup, consisting of a Solutions Architect, Technical/Team Lead, Project Manager, QA Tester(s), and Development Team. Because this structure results in three leads, potentially four if your team has a QA Lead, conflict of interest and a tug of war of ideas will ensue. Clear communication is critical. You will not feel empowered unless you’re the PM or Solutions Architect.
- If you’re assigned to a project or client, there is no guarantee you will see it till the end, regardless of your role in the project, because you may be shifted to another project or be sent to the bench for any reason.
- You don’t really have a direct manager. Constructive feedback may come from a consultant above your title.
- Outdated Waterfall approach to managing short term projects from within the office.
- This is not a company that values Agile software development. You will be met with resistance, especially from Project Managers and some members of upper management.
- Your ideas, unless you’re a senior consultant or the solutions architect, will not be valued. Therefore this company doesn’t have a culture that empowers their employees. Your title sets you apart. At least this was my experience. You will still be able to present at HMB University or act as a mentor as an Associate Consultant.
- HMB hires a lot of young talent freshly out of college or with a few years of experience. If you’re the only Senior Consultant, you will be acting primarily as a team lead and ensure you’re steps ahead of the junior developers. In other words, you scaffold sections of the application and the junior developers fill in the details. This is a very archaic process. You will also feel like you’re constantly handholding.
- Very internally competitive culture. People compete with each other. You will notice this within days after starting, as people will discuss their goals and titles. Also, there’s no full transparency. If someone gets promoted to one of the coveted titles, it’s kept under wraps. However it is eventually announced.
- The Senior or Principal Consultant title is a coveted role. They have a “Leadership” meeting where only the senior, principal and practice directors of the App Dev practice can join. They don’t discuss much “leadership”. You just meet up at a bar and chat about anything. It’s also poorly attended. This leads to a company culture that is not inclusive, where everyone is an equal and more junior levels appear as less important.
- You may be stuck with the same title for several years.
- None of the job titles, at least in App Dev, have job descriptions. This isn’t good because you don’t clearly know the skills you need to attain the next title.
- Principal Consultants don’t do much development (coding). In my experience at HMB, they acted more as architects.
- Short term projects that are run from the office will very likely go over budget due to bad estimates. You will be almost guaranteed to work overtime. Overtime will be mandatory for some projects when the PMs and Delivery Managers panic. Forget about work and life balance. There was one project where people worked probably 10 or 12 hours each day for several months.
- Task-based time tracking, which can be cumbersome and feel like a burden. You will be held individually accountable if you take too long to complete tasks.
