Optym Reviews

Pros

- Learning: doing cutting edge, challenging and interesting projects here at Optym. So, lots of opportunities to learn and grow. Of course it depends on you: show your interest and the management will gladly help you to grow. - People: very friendly folks. They do their best to support you in learning and accomplishing your tasks. Full support from team members. - Management: Optym is going through some changes which might be painful, but management is doing their best to support the employees and provide a friendly and prosperous work environment. - Working area: very clean and neatly designed buildings, cafe and cubicles. - Benefits: they offer very good health care packages and their 401K match is really good.

Cons

Gainesville is a small city and probably not the best place to grow your business. Makes it hard to attract talents as well.

Advice to Management

You need more experienced developers to help you improve the quality of your products. Hiring more senior people has started, but it should happen faster. Business team is always between developers and clients. This make the business learning and knowledge transfer very inefficient and slow. You should let developers learn from and talk to clients directly. You need an office in a big city.

Pros

-Friendly and helpful coworkers and great culture if you happen to be on the right team. -Gainesville is a nice place to live for young people and families. -Good health benefits, a lot of office snacks -A huge potential for growth as a company if execs and managers can get their act together and get out of their own way. -Impressive how far company has gotten without external investment -Diverse coworkers from all around the world -Very slowly, CEO working to make positive changes

Cons

-NEPOTISM is #1, it's family company. The CEO, his sons and close friends get preferred treatment and opportunities. -CEO and managers condescending and disrespectful to rest of employees, act "holier-than-thou" -Calls itself a startup even after 19 years in business, use it as excuse for unfocused/naive business strategy and poor project management -CEO does not want to share control/power, makes decisions for company that are often impulsive and short-sighted. -A lot of employees with undefined job responsibilities, making them less effective/focused, leads to people stepping on each other's toes and no one has to take responsibility. -Undefined reporting structure ("flat" organization). Makes performance evaluation a nightmare -Compensation is below market value because they are use to hiring students immediatley out of college and are used to underpaying them. Management get "sticker shock" when experienced people apply for jobs in higher level positions -4 HR directors joined then left in past year, indicates lack of importance of employees to senior management

Advice to Management

-Listen to your employees and consultants you hire. You hired them for a reason, let them do their jobs, step out of the way. -Bring in high-level people skilled in running a business. Right now company leaders are most interested in working hands-on in projects.

Pros

• Very smart people to work with and learn from • Challenging business problems • Freedom to experiment with new processes, development methodologies, and technology • Great benefits • Competitive Salary

Cons

• The performance appraisal process has scope for improvement. To this end, the introduction of 15Five system is a good first step.

Pros

- Everybody is very friendly and super intelligent. - Very little politics or worrying about who gets credit for what. Team-centered atmosphere focused on collaboration. - Learning and personal growth is a important facet of company culture. - The company is working on problems to make the world more efficient. - The company has gone through a significant transformation with a focus on employees. Focus has shifted from time spent in desks to what results the employees are achieving. - The company focuses on continuous improvement. It identifies problems it has and works on fixing them.

Cons

Although full of brilliant problem solvers, the company has less experience at general business. They are actively working on addressing this need.

Pros

High quality furniture. Good snacks.

Cons

Highly political and toxic workplace environment. Talented people leaving in flocks. People going MIA every other day. Middle management is clueless as to what they're doing. They're just there to take credit for success of the entire teams and blame someone when things diverge from the plan. CEO doesn't care about the company culture. Core values are simply nice posters on the wall. 4 HR heads quit the company in a span of a year. Employees are asked to spam Glassdoor with positive reviews. Everyone is just waiting for their visa/GC approvals to exit.

Advice to Management

Top management tries to sell the company to the highest bidder. They're unwilling to fix problems. The rotten ship will either sink or be sold to someone.

Pros

Benefits are reasonable. Including Friday lunch and snacks.

Cons

Everything is fake Cons: Everything you see about this company is fake. Nice photos show happy employees but the reality is at least 50% of the people in those pictures have left the company. The CEO doesn't care. He says it's OK people are leaving after a couple of years. They are nothing to him. Nice building and furniture but the reality is the company loses money because of incompetent management. They promise to treat you fairly but the reality is only those who worship the CEO and please his ego is given bonuses and promotions. They keep bringing employees from overseas for all positions. Is it even legal? Immigration should look into this practice. The US has qualified people for any of these positions. Stay away!

Advice to Management

Value your employees more

Pros

Optym is full of very friendly people from all over the world who love to share their culture and traditions. It is great place to begin your career, because you will find many opportunities early on to step up and take on responsibilities that push your limits. The level of creativity and collaboration that comes from the marketing team is unmatched, so more often than none, you are working on something interesting, fun and creative. They have a very strong culture of learning, giving you a structured amount of time every week to learn a new skill for your job. They care a lot about their image, so their facility is always impeccable with awesome coffee and snacks! They also have great benefits. and a great 401K match.

Cons

The work hours can get long at times. Sometimes, efforts to change the workplace culture feel forced and can dampen the mood. The tough work culture makes it difficult to work from home, or remotely without feeling guilty about it. They are actively trying to change this, but it will take time.

Advice to Management

Loosen up with how closely you manage people. Trusting more often than doubting will help people take more advantage of working remotely. And don't get frustrated when you don't see immediate results from your efforts to change the work culture. Your efforts are not lost. This is just something that will take time to take affect.

Pros

Good benefits and perks.

Cons

Inept CEO and project management that has run the business in the ground. Nepotism and favoritism at its best. Other people taking credit for your job. Unless you keep your nose brown, you stand no chance. Your achievements are not appreciated. You have to belong to the clique to make it there. Good people leaving in flocks every month. If you are looking for a stable place, go look somewhere else. You don't need to work for poor management like this. There are much better companies around that would appreciate your talent.

Advice to Management

Find better CEO and project managers