Pros
Easy to hold down a job here - They have such a hard time getting candidates that you won’t be fired unless you really screw up. Typically high salaries - See above, they pay higher salaries because they have a hard time finding and holding onto candidates. They are good at winning (DoD) contracts - This is why DSoft has managed to stumble along all these years instead of closing down.
Cons
No management structure - The management style is “I’ll take care of everything I can, you do the rest”. This exists at every layer of management down to the individual employee. This results in no one having a clearly defined role. It also adds to the stress in the office, which means that when something goes wrong employees get yelled at. The best way to be successful is to always have someone to blame. Preferably you can shift the blame on to your customer. The goal is to have a clear and compelling reason why you aren’t the person who should be getting yelled at. Ask to see a copy of the employee’s handbook before you accept an offer. You’ll see some of the typical CYA kind of policies, but everything is taken to an extreme such that every possible risk is shifted to the employees. There is an ESOP program, but it’s setup under a shell company. At DSoft they stood up a shell company called DTech Administrative Services and you get stock in *that* company, not DSoft itself. They throw money into it every year and you get a percentage of the shares. So instead of being a true ESOP, it’s just a crappy end of year bonus. They refer to it as a “retirement plan”, because there is no intention of you seeing any of the money for a very long time. Ask to see a copy of the ESOP program before you accept an offer. Their Agile process is terrible. They claim they follow scrum, and even sent 3 employees to become scrum masters, but none of those ideas have been put into practice. The only scrum planning they do is they make sure everyone has enough hours assigned to get through to the end of the sprint. No one checks to make sure that the hours being worked will meet any of the deadlines, or anything else that scrum proscribes. But if something goes wrong you’re the one getting yelled at. Turnover is so bad (40% annual in my group) that there was an HR push to interview all of the employees to gauge their feelings and see what could be improved around here. 6+ months later and nothing thing has changed. Clearly our opinions are not wanted. Ethics are a big deal when pitching to customers or prospective new hires, but not during the day to day routine. At one point half the team’s identifiable information (social security numbers, birthdate, address, etc.) was just sitting open on a server for anyone to look at it. Once I was told verbally to charge hours on days I didn’t work so that they could be billed a certain way, and they would “just know” how the hours were really worked. On another occasion I was assigned a brief security training with an accompanying exam at the end to prove that you knew the material. This was not company proprietary, it was required by their government customer. DSoft didn’t even know where the training was, they just gave me answers and expected me to fill out the paperwork. I had to find it myself to settle my own conscience. There are other examples but the overall vibe is that DSoft is extremely proud to be operating as a “Christian company”, right up until it’s time to stand up for what they claim they believe in. DSoft refuses to listen to feedback from employees. I’ve made suggestions about how to improve the work environment, and they were shot down very loudly and without even considering them. I’ve seen other people make suggestions, and they were also shot down. DSoft 's response is to blame the employee for any problems, and if that doesn’t work then get defensive. Also, I’m not sure where this goes, but to address some of the other comments about fake reviews: There was NOT a company wide email sent out, requesting employees to leave honest reviews. That is a lie. The positive reviews placed on the site were all put there by management, in response to having a bad rating here and needing to staff up for an upcoming contract. DSoft cherry-picked who to request reviews from, to ensure that they would all be 5-star reviews. It would appear that at least one of those people was unhappy with that arrangement.
