A summary of 1 year at Xdin (Senior Mechanical Engineer) (hourly paid)
Pros
1) Laid back people in its original office. However, "onsite work environment" depends on the personality of the customer company's manager. 2) Slightly multi-cultural. 3) Good for "young Swedish people" who don't have family/kids and are not married. 4) See "Cons" below:
Cons
***I felt the need to write this after reading all previous positive comments which are definitely not from the US people. 1) If you check "OTHER REVIEWS OF XDIN" here, you will realize that the positive comments have been written with an intermediate level English and are "NOT rated as helpful", while negative comments have good English and are rated as "Helpful". So you may figure who likes the company more. 2) No transparency on the ongoing business. They will hire you; move you 1500 miles just to make the extra 40k-60k of your back-not caring about how many kids you have; and then lay you off as soon as they realize they don't have anything on the table. You will suddenly be jobless, will have a whole house to move and be not prepared at all for what just happened. So it is quite a shock. I had it for the first time - literally hurts! 3) The best part is they will tell you this 30 minutes prior to your lay-off. They will change your first signed contract in the middle of the year (where you already signed a house lease - moved all your furniture there) and the new contract will pay you "A QUARTER" of the first contract's promised severance. 4) Even if you are genius at what you do doesn't matter. They have those small time shop career paths that will turn you away from what you actually enjoy doing and have been doing. If you don't like it, you will again get laid off right after your final task is complete. So, even if they are outsourcing, they are pretty amateur with how they handle "serious" industrial business. 5) You are at the mercy of their customer you are working for. If the customer doesn't want to pay you the actual worth of the project hours that you are doing, they will expect you to "work for free" - and supposedly you will be doing this for your Xdin manager - who will again lay you off as soon as you have delivered your project. (I've always been one the fastest people at all my jobs and have been credited for this by "all" my former managers - there is smt seriously wrong with this place in this sense. So, if you are not the fastest at what you do, you may experience even more trouble with this side of the business. The hours for projects are not based on a gentlemen agreement with only "one" of their customers - don't know other all other customers, but had to persuade this particular customer that the job would take 2.5-3 times of what he/she would come up with, and in the end it would turn out to be like that after reviewing previous tasks done by formed engineers, and thus would be agreed by both parties finally. Just, plain, exhausting process as if you are trying to get paid more than what is worth) 6) If you are a non-Swedish employee, that's most probably because they are short of their work visas. So, you might be replaced later at some point. They will bring in unqualified people (THEY REVIEWED THEIR RESUMEs before they hired them and they know their expertise & skills) for the job as qualified people are expensive & Xdin is actually low-balling, and once they can find a work visa, they will definitely bring in the new people (with previous proper training & experience for the job) and you might be replaced by the other Swedish engineer "who is only looking to have fun and the US experience to go back to his country and be cool that he worked in the US", while you are "trying to make a living for your family" and "trying to be strong" on the outside for your family/kids - while the whole ground under you is shaking.. 7) As you will most probably choose the hourly payment option thinking that your employer would be providing you 40 hours/week of workload, you will notice that you made the wrong decision when you start getting 1/2, 1/4 of your actual paycheck. So there goes stability if you have a tight budget, and arranged all your expenses assuming you would get paid at full for each month. So, hope it is clear: If you have family - just don't. Everyone with family that I knew of there had to leave under 1 year. (even the new manager and the ones with 3-4 kids!) They even laid off 4 people in a weekend (!!) without any prior notification!!! If you are someone who cares about job security, keep this in mind as well. But if you are unemployed, go for it. Still, don't stop looking for a new job. You literally won't know when you will be laid off and you will learn it 30 minutes before that happens.
