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      Synthesis Technology

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      Synthesis Technology Reviews

      3.4

      43% would recommend to a friend

      (18 total reviews)

      John Toepfer

      40% approve of CEO

      42% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      3.3

      Diversity and inclusion

      3.2

      Compensation and benefits

      3.0

      Culture and values

      3.0

      Work/Life balance

      2.7

      Senior management

      2.4

      Career opportunities

      Synthesis Technology has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 18 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Synthesis Technology employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      18 reviews
      1.0
      4 Jan 2016

      One of the few honest reviews

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      -Catered lunches once a week and office snacks -Casual work dress -This is an okay place to work *if* you are either career switching, out of college, or currently unemployed and desperate for a job. The majority of the employees can fit into one of these categories.

      Cons

      -Training programs and system documentation are non-existent. There are no naming conventions and the code is not commented. The only way to understand the unintuitive system is to seek out veteran employees on your own. -Limited resources and poor planning. As others have stated, the president's only strategy seems to be to sell as much product as possible with no concern for overworked employees and impossible launch dates -high turnover. The company is in a catch-22 situation of not being able to keep competent employees around causing higher work load and no time to train new employees efficiently. This leads to an increasingly stressful environment, rushed work, and poor performance. -no policies. The lack of policies include but are not limited to: work from home, accruement of time off, bonus calculations, pay advancements. Instead, these items are decided seemingly through nepotism. -All work must be billable. No work hours can be spent fixing known bugs (unless they are affecting client experience), improving the product, or on self-education. -No upper management review system. The company has previously and is currently suffering from unprofessional managers. -Poor company structure with no growth. Employees of 4+ years have the same title as those who have just started. Once you have learned the system, the work becomes boring and there is nowhere to move. -Aside from the fact that financial documents are inherently boring, it's impossible to feel pride in your work between the outdated UI and the constant bugs due to non-existent QA standards

      avatar
      Synthesis Technology Response
      10y
      Synthesis’ core value is “trust” and we take it very seriously. When it comes to employee and client relationships, our ultimate goal is to nurture a trusting relationship that flows both ways. We have never and will never ask for fake reviews to be published on this page. If you’re concerned about any of the reviews you see here, we encourage you to talk with us in person to judge our people and culture for yourself. In terms of training and documentation, there are systems currently in place that are continuously improved upon, using employee feedback as our guide. We have a five-year veteran currently spearheading our employee training and onboarding program. Commenting of code is encouraged and we’re focused on keeping system and instance documentation up-to-date. We are currently working on exciting architecture and UX enhancements to make user experience better for both employees and clients. As we update our code, we strive to do so using methods which are reusable and simple to maintain. One-third (1/3) of our workforce has been with us for five (5) years or more. We have a lot of talent within our four walls and we’re very proud of it! Although we meet the average rate of attrition for a company of our size, we are always working on ways to retain our employees and minimize turnover. During production (The first 2-3 weeks during the months of Jan, Apr, July, and Oct) stress levels can be higher than normal, as we are working hard to help our clients reach their timeline goals. If it takes extra hours to complete the job, employees can finish up their work at the office or from home -- we are flexible with employees on how and where they get their work done. In the second half of 2015, we hired a dedicated HR consultant who is currently updating our employee handbook and working in tandem with employees and ownership to improve and document our growing benefits package. Check out our careers pages for details on benefits. In terms of performance reviews, Synthesis does have a formal review process (at 5 months and annually on the employee’s hire date) to keep open communication between employee and manager. In addition, employees are encouraged to provide feedback at any time, as our ultimate goal is to make Synthesis a great place to work! We can only do that with open communication, so we thank everyone for their input.
      1.0
      22 Oct 2014

      A "tech" "startup" that is extremely out of touch with itself and its employees

      Client services engineer
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      -Casual work dress environment -Nice people, for the most part -Free Monday lunches are pretty cool, with presentations that are a complete waste of time

      Cons

      -Office politics were a big strain: advertised as a "startup" at interview, but politics in the workplace reflected anything but -No real opportunities for career advancement. The only move is to one of very few project manager positions. This has led to people being promoted to project manager positions without a real need for it. Plenty of teams only have a manager and one employee underneath. -Upper management is extremely out of touch with the reality of the company. They think there's a great culture, when there's lots of dissatisfaction across a multitude of teams. Job postings advertise whirlyball, ping pong daily and wine tastings when none of those things have happened in 2+ years. There is no real vision for the company's future, no goal for us to push for as a whole. Just the same old tech support for clients day in and day out, with very few "exciting" projects sprinkled in (i.e. boring). -Very opaque and undocumented policies. Company's earnings and growth is hidden from the employees. Time-off policies have very weird rules for no good reason. For example, you can't take half a personal day, you must take a full one, no exceptions. BUT you can take a half vacation day for some reason. -Job becomes extremely boring, very quickly, with no real opportunity to pick up new skills after you get a grasp of the product. The interface is literally unchanged from 2001 and it's hideous. There is no real effort to upgrade the user interface. Client dissatisfaction with the product is real, management tries to delude themselves from that fact. -Nepotism. -Upper Management is not proactive at all and only act on making changes to the product once the client complains. There's no go-getter attitude with their vision, they rely on outdated technology, and if they don't invest in the company's vision themselves, why would they expect their employees to do so?

      2.0
      4 Oct 2015

      Short-sighted business plan, bad resource management, and upper-management drama

      Client services engineer
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Mostly good people, casual work environment, challenging work.

      Cons

      No work/life balance unless you refuse to work overtime; the CEO keeps selling work and products to clients that either a) there are not enough teams to complete or b) the company has not actually put through proper development. This leads to band-aid product patches going out all the time. There is no development life-cycle with the product, no QA team, no pre-release testing (the teams that are already swamped with work are expected to do every part of the post-coding product release cycle). The resource planning and management is abysmal, and they are not at all prepared for the growth they are trying to get through new contracts. There is so much drama at the top level that it is pretty much impossible to see what the company long-term plan is, but based on the way things are handled and communicated to the employees, the company plan seems to be "don't hire people until it's too late and sell as much work as possible without accounting for the people needed to do it."

      avatar
      Synthesis Technology Response
      10y
      Work-life balance is an employee benefit we take very seriously. Employees are encouraged to speak up if they feel their balance has been disrupted for any reason. We have recently ramped-up our sales and marketing efforts and as a result more work is coming down the pipeline. Due to the tight labor market, hiring is a significant challenge for tech companies everywhere. However, we work tirelessly to find the very best talent to support our internal teams and our clients. Our excellent client services team is what differentiates us from our competitors, so hiring great people is a top priority. We are continuing to improve our QA processes both within our teams and as we continue to add to our QA department. We welcome constructive feedback from employees at all times in order to improve how we handle the challenges that come with our growing line of product, services, and clientele.
      Viewing 1 - 3 of 18 Reviews
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      ReviewsSynthesis Technology reviews

      Glassdoor has 21 Synthesis Technology reviews submitted anonymously by Synthesis Technology employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Synthesis Technology is right for you.