GaiaTech reviews

Everything else. Before believing the positive reviews written by sniveling, spineless little bootlickers (the company has a number of those, since they try to screen for them in interviews), you should know that several of the founding executives of the company have left in the last several years. They had all been there for 15+ years, and were considered "lifers" who had given their all to the company and put up with unbelievable workloads, accomplishing a great deal. But they're gone now, because the culture has eroded THAT badly. How? Lots of ways, worthy of book-length pursuit of the kind devoted to the forsensic examination of other companies that collapsed, a fate that will be inevitably be shared by GaiaTech. But just in the interest of brevity, they follow a business model of chronic underbidding, followed by panicky, time-wasting meetings about projects going over budget, followed by more panicky meetings to try to convince the customer to pay more, followed by a new project deal and more underbidding and a new cycle. They don't seem to understand that there might be something amiss with this model. The CEO is a living example that good luck can befall anyone, as he makes bad decisions in multiple succession then runs around like a grade-school kid trying to convince his staff to help bail him out. They also assume that employees will work overtime without additional compensation to help them meet their miniscule budgets. It is a business model based on incompetence, on unfounded assumptions, and on shameless handout seeking.

Senior management apparently has limited business acumen. Hundreds of thousands are thrown away chasing ideas, and when the ideas don't pan out, more money is thrown at it. Too many generals and too few privates leads to constantly changing way of budget tracking, employee expectations, and methods of evaluation. Senior management expects junior staff to work harder and harder to make up for money blown on bad ideas. Staff turnover is high, so the company is frequently understaffed. Senior managers demand that employees work long hours because work cannot be turned away or cherry picked for only the most lucrative work. Several times a year it's "sorry guys, we've got a heavy load right now and need you step up." Typically the staff are already logging 50-60 hour weeks, but when these rushes come, you are expected to work around the clock. The work product obviously suffers. When it comes time for recompense, you would think they'd be glad to share some of the profits made by your hard work, but they drag their feet. Raises are few and far between, and small when they come--even for employees that are doing well. There are no annual cost of living adjustments. They justify not giving raises because they do typically give an annual bonus (you can expect a couple thousand if you meet their extremely difficult utilization goals), but the bonuses are neither tied to company profitability nor employee performance. They keep hiring new/additional senior managers, who arrive with big ideas that typically fall flat. The added senior people only serve to absorb profits that could have been passed on to the extremely hard working staff. The business plan appears to be: milk every employee for everything s/he is worth. If the employee quits, raise expectations for the remaining group and have them train up a new staff member. The benefits are ok at best. Three weeks vacation/year with no sick days and a low accumulation cap (on a whim, they recently decided to pay out any hours accumulated over 80, with no notice or discussion). The health insurance is also ok but very unspectacular. They are currently trying to sell the business to a larger firm. The most recent attempt failed, but another is on the horizon. Things will change, but change at GaiaTech tends to be to the detriment of the junior staff.