There are some major issues at RSI that I think every potential hire should be aware of before making a decision to join the company.
1) Ancient technology
The tech world is so exciting right now, and RSI is taking no part in it, instead electing to build software using outdated methodologies (if you can even classify their processes as methodologies) and old, abandoned technology. RSI builds their software using a Java/C# layer and a "Business Rules" layer that sits on top of that. The "Business Rules" layer is written in FICO Blaze Business Rules Engine. Here is an except from FICO's website:
"FICO® Blaze Advisor® is the world's leading decision rules management system, maximizing control, agility and actionability to optimize high-volume operational decisions. Blaze Advisor transforms the entire process for developing, deploying and maintaining rules-based decision applications."
I will assure you that everything in that excerpt is the complete opposite in the reality of development at RSI. If you're a Computer Science major, minor, or have any sliver of self-respect when it comes to technology, you want to stay AS FAR AWAY AS POSSIBLE from FICO Blaze Business Rules engine. RSI has been using this forever and shows no signs of stopping, even though there are dozens of ways they could develop a better, faster, and overall more polished product if they ditched FICO Blaze and stepped into the 21st century.
The FICO Blaze Advisor IDE (which you have to use) is slow, crashes all the time, and every time you install a Windows update it breaks and you have to go through a painstaking reinstall process. In addition, the small subsection of "developers" that use FICO Blaze are not active at all online (think Stackoverflow), so when you run into issues you legitimately CANNOT use Google to troubleshoot, leaving you banging your head against your desk for hours on end.
RSI's commitment to using FICO Blaze sums up it's stance on modern development standards and seriously hinders its ability to deliver a modern, polished product. If you work for RSI, there is about a 50% chance you will have to have daily interactions with FICO Blaze Business Rules engine.
2) Sacrificed work-life balance and workplace stress is common due to questionable project management decisions
Full disclosure, I worked in only one of RSI's offices during my time with the company. RSI has multiple offices all over the US at client sites. They have one specific office that functions as a "development hub" where a small group of employees work remotely on multiple projects at once; this is the office that I worked at. This following point applies to my experience and perception of coworkers experiences at that office, supporting multiple projects at once.
No matter how many or how few projects RSI currently has, it always feels like you're trying to scoop water out of a flooding bathtub using a ladle with holes in it. There always seems to be more work than possible given the number of employees working on each project. 75% of the time, management is breathing down your neck to ask for ticket status, and when your realistic time estimate doesn't align with what they think is an acceptable answer, they will push you to work overtime (nights and even weekends if necessary).
This behavior is to be expected every once in a while, especially when project deadlines are approaching and the client is getting antsy. However, if this happens constantly during the SDLC and over and over again on each and every project, there's an obvious problem with project managers and upper-level employees giving unreachable project estimates. No employee wants to be under pressure 100% of the time to hit obviously unrealistic deadlines that lead to a horrible work-life balance and extreme stress in the workplace. In addition, RSI is pushing employees to do whatever they can to push out anything necessary to get tickets off their name, which leads the employee to sacrifice quality in order to avoid working until 9 p.m.
Management needs to do better in estimating project timelines
3) Every employee is given the job title "Consultant"
RSI is technically a consulting agency and therefore all their employees are technically consultants. However, most RSI employees fall into one of the following buckets: Software Developers, DevOps Engineers, Database Administrators/Developers, Business Analysts, and Project Managers. Now, if you Google each of these titles and look at their average salaries you will see that they vary from role to role, as one would expect. However, it is my opinion that RSI lumps everyone into a single "Consultant" bucket in order to avoid paying that salaries that more technical roles usually demand. If you daily responsibilities include checking in code changes, investigating complex software issues, and reviewing junior employees' spaghetti code, you should probably be called a Software Engineer and paid as one, just as if you meet with stakeholders, draft user stories, and complete acceptance testing you should be called a Business Analyst and paid as a Business Analyst, but that is simply not the case at RSI. In addition, when you move on from RSI, you have the added challenge of explaining what your duties as a "Consultant" were, since most hiring managers will be confused as to why your job title doesn't match your experience.
4) The source code is kept hidden from 90% of employees
This is one of the more bizarre ones. As a developer at RSI, you often run into issues in your Blaze Business Rules code that requires you to understand what's happening one layer under, in the Java/C#. As a developer at most companies, after some digging through repos it becomes obvious (or at least you have some idea) as to where the issue is. That is not the reality of being a developer at RSI. Because the product source code is inexplicably hidden from most developers, you need to organize a meeting with someone at the West Coast office in order to troubleshoot your issue. This process wastes so much time and is extremely anti-agile. Just let developers read the code.
5) When someone leaves the company, their work is just lumped on their teammate
I've witnessed coworkers' work loads increase 1.5-3x, with no pay increase, because someone on the team quit. Management makes little or no effort to bring in new employees to fill the gaps created by those who left, and the loyal employees suffer because of it, often creating a domino effect of people leaving and lumping their work on the next person.
6) Bad requirements lead to bad development and wasted time
I have witnessed countless times in which a developer will complete work based on business requirements that passed down from a BA or manager that fails acceptance testing by the client who then come back with requests that deviate from the original requirements. This is definitely the norm and not the exception at RSI. While it is fine to have and to react to changing requirements, RSI definitely wastes a lot of valuable time in this back-and-forth game between developers, BAs, and clients. As a developer, you can only do what you are told to do in your tickets, and it doesn't feel great when you constantly have to revisit tickets that failed acceptance due to either mismanagement on the BAs side, or uncertainty from the client. RSI needs to do better in this regard in order to keep developers' sanity and to reduce waste from inefficient processes.
