Small Business w/family atmosphere - Software QA Engineer CA Engineering Employee Review

4.0
22 Aug 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people who work at CA Engineering are wonderful! Very kind, understanding, and truly they try to help. The technologies used are excellent! Everyone I worked with was excellent! Quickly, you become family as you labor together to help the customer be happy (no easy feat!) The Tae Kwon Do guy that walks around seems really rough (it's his military background), but really he's one of the kindest people (Safety Tip: share hot chocolate chip cookies with him).

Cons

There seemed to be a disconnect between discussions held between senior leadership and managers in charge of various teams. It seemed managers of various teams would be informed about customer complaints, needs, costs, concerns, goals etc., but some managers would not relay (proactively) the information downward towards the employees in the trenches. This left the employees in the trenches, who were working on projects for a customer, uninformed. Thank goodness Agile methodology was being used! Standup meetings was where customer information typically got shared with us in the trenches. Another issue was sometimes managers would not have a project for you to work on that would be permitted to be charged towards the customer. In those cases, your time would have to be charged against CA Engineering (which is expensive for a small business - you should ALWAYS charge your time to the customer if possible!) This caused engineers, working in the trenches, to try to come up with their own projects that might benefit the customer. An uncomfortable position if you don't have an over-all business picture with direct knowledge about customer concerns, complaints, needs, wants, etc.

Explore other reviews about CA Engineering

5.0
2 Aug 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Many opportunities to try different things

Cons

Not a lot of hierarchy, hard to know who you are reporting to at times

2.0
2 Sept 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

They value time a good work life balance and are doing the best they can to make a fun working environment for their employees. Worked on some really cool projects. Coworkers make work really fun. The building has a gym, pickle ball courts, volleyball courts, and annual summer party for all businesses in the area.

Cons

Lots of talk and not a lot of action when it comes to compensation. It is hard to meet with the CEO who has to approve all salary adjustments. It took months to get a small raise. There are talks of growth but when it comes down to it there isn't room to grow here. The management level they have has been there a long time and they don't seem to be promoting people from within. I never saw someone go from Software Engineer to Senior Software Engineer or Team Lead while I was there. A lot of 'company R&D'. There was a lot of my time not being billed to customers and just being billed to the company. I was never awarded ESOP shares/stock because of company performance.

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