Nothing but a façade - Senior Software Engineer Hypergiant Employee Review

I’ve worked at Hypergiant for 5 years and it was my first job out of school. Doing so has tainted my view on the entire technology industry. Your actual experience with Hypergiant will be limited, they treated me as if they were exclusively a staffing agency. I did not get to work on any “in-house” projects, or cool things like space or climate change. They place you with one of their clients and you are expected to work with them day in and day out. Daily client standups, meetings, and demos. You are expected to adjust your schedule to accommodate these clients. Sometimes this arrangement will span years with the same client. Interactions with staff at Hypergiant are limited to one-hour weekly team meetings, where usually nothing useful is discussed and is more an avenue for everyone to vent with each other about how much they dislike the client they are working with, and how bad Mondays are for some reason. Also, Hypergiant usually bills at least twice your salary to these clients, for not really doing much themselves. You have very little choice in choosing which of their clients you work for. If you are a high-performer, or have a good relationship with the client, but are miserable on a project, they simply won’t care and continue on. That was my experience at least. One of the biggest things I noticed while at Hypergiant was their lack of diversity. I think I’ve only ever worked with a couple folks who weren’t of European descent in my five years. Diversity is something they pretend to commit to, but is nothing more than a virtuous signal. Client teams had stark differences in terms of diversity. A look at the “company” page on Hypergiant’s website makes these comments seem obvious. They have a weekly “happy hour” meeting scheduled at the end of the day designed as an avenue to talk about things outside of work. I thought this was a great idea, the only thing is everyone is drinking alcohol during this and you are expected to as well. You will feel pressured to join in by your manager. During my 5 years, I don’t believe I have ever received an official written performance review. I’m not really sure how this can be possible at a tech company. If you have imposter syndrome you will have to beg your manager for some kind of review, otherwise you will have no idea whether you are doing good at your job or not. There’s very little three-way communication between you, clients, and them. If you are outside of the U.S. be careful, they run some pretty sketchy schemes to hire lower-cost international talent. They will say you are a contractor, but treat you no differently than any of their U.S. based employees. This sounds enticing at first, ie. paid vacation time, but this can ultimately be detrimental to you as you are responsible for liability on projects, and you aren’t offered many rights to protect you. This is extremely concerning because you will likely be asked to do something illegal at some point, like steal intellectual property, which was the case for me and my team. You also do not get access to any sort of 401k program or health benefits. Definitely don’t become chronically sick or disabled while working here. They will “let you go” and offer zero support or severance. They don’t offer paid sick leave or disability insurance to international workers as well. If you get laid off as a result of this, you will become dependent on your savings, and they will wait a year until you are on the brink of homelessness to offer any meaningful support through a legal representative. In short, working at Hypergiant makes you feel as valued as an ant you see on a morning sidewalk. They will probably claim this is libel to my attorney, but leadership over there is living on some other planet and they don’t want to accept reality. Most of my peers were amazing to work with, super smart and supportive. It’s a shame that leadership can’t respect and support the very people that make their business successful. Have a great day :)