Pros
Easy to get a job Good location Like-minded employees Good work-life balance
Cons
Once you work at VMC you will realize that upper management are involved in a culture of back patting their own backs and benefits sponging (trips to the US, game cons, client freebies, swag etc) and bending over to clients often unreasonable requests. While refusing to perform even basic performance reviews for their testers or in-turn grant wage increases and promotions. To call HR (ER, Employee Relations) incompetent is an understatement for the ages. They have no experience and will frequently miss-pay employees, attempt to create confusing terms of employment as to baffle the worker- which in most cases these are breaking labor laws. If you attempt to question any of this you will be subjected to poor treatment and harassment. Pay increases/promotions have shown a trend of being granted temporarily. If you are given one you're told it is only for the duration of the project at which point you will go back down to your previous level. Don't expect the increase to be significant. If you do - by some miracle - get a promotion to Lead, you will be over worked and under paid. You will wish for the good old days of being a tester. You will be given no training. You will be expected to toe the company line. If you attempt to make any changes, just the smallest of waves, you will be firmly told that "this is how things are" and expected to keep quiet. This is how management preserve their jobs. "If it isn't broke, don't fix it" is the mentality. Unfortunately, a lot is "broke" and as a result VMC have lost their biggest clients in the last 18 months. Management and Leads often know of ramp-downs weeks in advance - despite saying the opposite - but they will wait until the last hours of the final shift to tell testers that they are no longer needed and will be on call. Primarily this is to prevent conflict but shows an incredible lack of respect for their employees. If you are put on call due to no work, you will be kept there potentially indefinitely. So if you do go on call and aren't that interested in future work just resign and collect your 4%. Please also note, you might be "Full-time" and getting 37.5-40hrs per week. But in reality you're on a 1 month rolling zero hours contract.