11y
Greetings,
I appreciate and respect the feedback from any former or current employee, because as the owner and founder of the company I am striving to create an engaging environment for everyone at PowerChord. In addition, we are constantly trying to add value and provide the best service possible to our clients.
I will address the specific comments from the former employee.
Thanks for the "Pros" on new technology and attempting to advance everyone's knowledge. We adopt new technologies as they become viable for our applications and are proven stable platforms. With over a dozen programmers there are new ideas being proposed almost daily and they must be weighed as to their overall impact on the systems, maintenance and future direction of our products.
I am glad you like our company parties, provided lunches and overall atmosphere. I spent most of my life in California and that reflects my personal experiences, so I have tried to bring that positive, loose vibe to the workplace.
With regard to code writing, copy and paste sounds like a derogatory statement but I do not take offense at that. In fact, we try to re-use code where it makes sense. Certainly no one is purposely copying bugs but it also does not make sense to re-write a login page dozens of times over if you have one that works. Every developer at PowerChord is empowered to improve upon existing code and is encouraged to be part of improving things moving forward so part of that responsibility lies with each developer.
There is plenty of technical expertise at PowerChord. I do not believe we could have over 7,000 clients for over 10 years if we did not have a solid handle on technical matters.
There may be "cliques" at any company. PowerChord strives to be inclusive as is evidenced by our daily interaction, company lunches, team meetings, etc. Come meet me personally and I will give you a tour and introduce you to our team.
How else do you make a company better, a department better, code better than by challenging people, processes and ideas. One way we do this is through Peer Code Review with clear goals: inspire better programming, improve processes, encourage collaboration, and keep our code maintainable and of good quality. Finding defects is viewed positively because our developers share these goals and objectives. Each critique provides a chance to reduce errors and eliminate as many defects as possible before code is pushed live where it can affect thousands of clients. Our developers find value in this feedback as they strive to consistently improve their skills; each review offers an opportunity for learning and growth in a respectful environment. We are not pointing out flaws. Rather, we are strengthening our team and the quality of our software. If you want to learn from others and have PowerChord pay for your training while working in a progressive, collaborative environment, then I would welcome you to visit us.
Code reds are not an unlikely occurrence in business; however, I am happy to say we have only experienced two this year. While we think this is a pretty good track record, we strive for zero. We continuously implement procedures to improve efficiencies and better determine priorities, limiting workflow disruptions while improving our client experience. Entire departments are never shut down, we simply get to work troubleshooting and fixing.
Yes, we do have a two week maintenance schedule to meet the dynamic, rich content environment that we provide for our clients. We feel that taking longer than two weeks to make a simple change is not appropriate in today’s digital marketplace, since we also do much of the marketing for our clients. Our largest clients are number one in their industries and have a web presence provided by PowerChord that completely dominates their competition.
I am optimistic about the outlook for PowerChord. We are debt free, profitable, have over 7,000 clients, were named one of Inc. Magazine's top companies, part of the Tampa Fast 50 for the third time, just signed a large European contract and have a great team. There is always room for improvement and I continue to drive that mindset at PowerChord. If you want to be part of a dynamic, challenging and rewarding team then PowerChord may be the place for you. Thanks for your time.
Pat Schunk
