Pros
- Free Good Coffee - If you are lucky and born into a middle class background, most likely people will love you
Cons
If they have shared a fancy job description listing Agile/Scrum, Git and even secondary technologies, it is misrepresented. Only few get to play around with this and majority of developers have to code in Java and Groovy. Alfa is a monolith application (Java and Groovy) - MVC. Fraudulent company which represent the job to its potential candidates (experienced hires). The v5 developers, Java developers have to use SVN, store patches in the computer and also upload to Jira ticket. Their time box lasts for a month. I believe three weeks of development and a stabilisation weeks. Development work takes ages to get approved. There is something called tech design which means someone would have designed the code and one would have to mindlessly code as you don't have to solve any problems. The only reason they hire is for your Java skills. Most of the time spent arguing with managers and been told to take pragmatic approach. If you love money and don’t mind working on a technology which is a decade outdated, then this is the company for you. Simple changes requires technical and functional architects and then you will be pushed for time. The code base is horrible and during Dev init, they use the time of new joiners to clean up the code. You will be expected to give an update to your manager once in the morning and once in the evening and in between if he/she demands it - Micromanagement. You will be expected to log your time, as that is how they charge their clients. One must do productive 8 hours of work. The v5 Alfa is a monolith, if the Job spec contains the following things, unfortunately this is not the reality as a Java developer you will be only working on client requested enhancements. • Client requested enhancements • Architecture modernisation (e.g. SoA/Microservice) • Performance and scaling initiatives • Open source and developer advocacy • Greenfield point solution applications (mobile and web) • Conversion of existing front-end to JS/React • Innovation and skunkworks projects There are no plans to modernise the V5 developers and since going public they have budget constraints. They mainly hired people who are graduates in the past and train them to do the job. When you make a simple change, you have to test it locally, wait for a day and then once is deployed in dev environment and you pray to all gods you can possibly imagine and hope there are no integration test failures and if there are, you deploy a fix for it. Then you wait for another day for things to go green. If you truly love to waste time then this is the company for you. Then you have to do regression testing. That is you have to take screenshots of each step and update a Jira ticket if something is working or not. So most of you time is spent on dealing with people, updating Jira comments and reading Jira comments and understanding what is going on if you are doing development work. If it is pool fixing, then debuggers and talking to people what Alfa supposed to do and no one in the company knows it. Pretty much if you are willing to spend the next 5-10 years with functional knowledge very specific to Alfa, then this is the Job for you. If you were to make a commit, then you have to keep an eye out for any potential modules getting broken. So pretty much you cannot concentrate and just code. Every single day, you are expected to update a Jira comments in the evening and the progress you have made, along with patches. They will come across as progressive company, which is a lie itself. It is very hierarchical and people in the management have huge egos. They talk about Leader Leader culture within Alfa, but if one were to assume this is the case and talk to upper management about these issues, you will be soon be told one have to talk one's own level. Company is an asset finance software company and I have worked at places which was more diverse than current company. They offered IPO and now they have suddenly realised that how less diverse the company is and because of their unsubconscious biased, they only hired white middle class people in the past. One starts to wonder, they only hire people from diverse backgrounds because they went public. Overall, it is a worse place to work for and if you truly believe everyone is equal and there is no class system, then this company is not for you. The ones who get promoted are the ones who are loud and knows how to play the game. If you hate corporate culture and wants to work with honest and genuine people, then this company is not for you. As for investors, this company gives the same test to candidates and give hints as to solve it. So they are not necessarily hiring people who are problem solvers but rather people who can just code in Java. If raised, can you please have other approaches such as hackerank, one is immediately dismissed. Alfa has referral scheme too, so current employees just have to pass their solution to the candidate they are referring to. I have personally suggested that how moving to git would be beneficial and how Alfa could itself sell customised product for clients such as separating the back end to microservices and have all the features and customised front end client branches which has minimalistic Alfa front end master branch. Again ideas are dismissed and since it’s hierarchical, you will not get any credit for your work. They are not in the position to use git as it would require to train people up on it which would cost money for the company. Currently most of the employees only know how to use SVN. You will get trained on Guice as an example (Experienced hire) Pretty much this is the deal, you love money and can put up with such kind of backwards company then this company is for you. Some other reviews mentioned your own free aws account, but in order for you to play around with these, you have innovation afternoon which is once a month. Most employees are pushed for time and they never get to enjoy the facilities unless you are in management.
