Proteus Reviews

Small can be limiting as client list not that of the big 4

There isn't much you can get at Proteus that you wouldn't easily be able to get elsewhere in Lincoln - Salaries are low compared to competitors, the tech stack and products are outdated and buggy, if at all usable, and the culture of collaboration generally found in small teams isn't there. Proteus sees a lot of turnover, and it is for good reason -- either you're a senior developer who can understand the wretched codebase, or you're a newcomer who can't get productive fast enough in the convoluted framework. There are seven signs of technical debt leading to a death spiral, and Proteus has made its way to number 7. 1. The company sidelines engineering’s concerns as a nice-to-have. 2. The codebase itself quite literally becomes a “difficult work environment”. 3. It gets hard to recruit strong engineering talent. 4. The company’s best engineers start to leave for blue-sky work at other startups where the codebase is more enjoyable to work in. 5. New features start shipping very slowly. Or stop altogether. 6. Gradual attrition of all engineers who like building things until only “maintenance-style” engineers remain. 7. Company falls irrecoverably behind the times. In Lincoln, I'd recommend you choose another company with more greenfield projects and management that will actually listen to your suggestions, instead of putting off said concerns for years. - There is probably not a single worthwhile test in the codebase. - Version control hasn't reached all parts of the product. - Documentation is sparse, and some ways of interacting with the product require hacky fixes to do simple, straightforward changes. - Management doesn't listen to or value its engineers, and they all leave, one by one.