Crossover for Work Reviews

Pros

I'm enjoying that I get to work remotely with smart, honest people from all over the world. The intensive testing and screening process gave me a good sense of what the job would be really like day-to-day. I've had very few meetings in my first two weeks. We work asynchronously, which means we work together by writing things down. It's a very efficient way to work.

Cons

It takes some getting used to having your work rate monitored in terms of keystrokes, etc. It also takes some getting used to waiting for teammates in another timezone to start their day because I'm used to working in an office.

Pros

-I'll start with the obvious advantages: 1) Your commute can be as short as the distance between your bed and your desk. In my case, it's 15 meters. 2) More quality time with family & friends 3) Ability to travel - or even move- to your favourite countries/cities! 4) A certain flexibility to plan your day- very difficult to achieve in traditional companies. On a personal level, joining Crossover allowed me to do the following: 1) move back to my home country ( with a decent wage to live on) 2) Take up surfing. I can literally go for a surf in the middle of the day. Brilliant, innit? 3) I'm living in a sunny country now- very important for my productivity. Crossover is a very competitive but "transparent" place to work in , metrics are clear, people are great.

Cons

- no after-work drinks:) Regional "get together" initiatives started recently though - more diversified management ( cultural and educational background) to reflect the truly global nature of the company...There's a transformation going on so thumbs up there! - Crossover is not for someone used to the "hand-holding" in other traditional companies. One gets used to it though and it's actually beneficial!

Pros

Crossover does require work from home. For many, this is a good thing and, for me, helped productivity. The salary is good, but depending upon your country's tax situation it might not be as good as it seems on the surface.

Cons

Where do I start? I tried to be objective with my 2-star rating; Crossover isn't unethical or stealing from their employees or anything like that. However, for a seasoned professional, be warned... I joined in one of the Very High Dollar executive-level positions being driven by their desire to acquire 50+ companies in the near term. I'm in the US. As such (and I knew this going in), the tax consequences for being a contractor are non-trivial. There's also the consideration that you must fund any perks yourself - healthcare, retirement, etc. While the salary is generous enough to do that, it's not as shiny as it seems on the surface. Your mileage may vary depending upon your home country. What I really disliked: Constant tracking/ justification of work stream. Seriously. As others have pointed out, it's difficult to actually *get* credit for a full work week without working extra. Especially in some of the higher-level, more 'creative' positions such as architect, product management, etc. there's minimal or no opportunity to review or think over things. For me, I work in bursts followed by small distractions in which I'm running the problems in the background of my thoughts. A variety of coworkers and management in my history have almost universally commented about the volume of good work I produce. Even my peers at Crossover had no problem with the quantity or quality of my production. However, their tracking software and systems simply don't credit anything other than linear, constant "work". This was bad for me, resulting in me working extra, reworking things as I attempting to change my processes, "faking" it, or simply working longer to attempt to make my hours. I also felt bad for some of the more junior or "factory" positions. It really is tracked by the minute, with lots of incentive to find "problems" with productivity. This is really a thinly-veiled method of wringing blood out of a turnip, by finding flaws or gaps and essentially docking pay. Yeah, the salaries are good but the amount of ancillary work that goes into making "real" hours is awful, and I felt like a chump contributing to it. I had to quit for my sanity.

Pros

It pays weekly, I didn't need a title to work and it was fully remote. If you prepare well for the interviews and exams it is not hard to get in. The salary was high for the place I was living, therefore I didn't have any economic worries during my period working there. Since you are constantly required to learn how different SaaS apps work, I took some programming courses and got paid for it :)

Cons

You have to adhere fully to the time schedules of 9h (8h of effective work+1h of food/freetime) and there is only 3 different turns, so it is remote but not flexible. They make you install this software that takes pictures of you every 10 minutes to see that you are actually working on the computer, which felt very invasive of my privacy. I did see a lot of employee rotation but I never felt that I was going to get cut off out of the sudden.

Pros

- Remote work - nice salary package

Cons

- Found nothing wrong, if you are willing to work 40 hours a week and get your salary to pay bills and enable yourself. But if you are here for friendships, references and jumping positions casually then it is not for you.

Pros

Talented people (managers and teammates) that really knew their field and were respectful of their colleagues. You are exposed to a lot of newer technologies as the company strives for latest and greatest patterns and tech stacks. Working from anywhere with an internet connection is a great perk.

Cons

The company culture at Trilogy (one of the companies you may end up working at) is virtually non-existent, you're very much a number in a big machine. Each of the developers in the team works in severe isolation, if you struggle with mental health, be aware and look after yourself. The staff turnover was very high, we had 9 team members leave the team (5 resigned, 4 fired), some were only there for a few months, the process used is highly destructive and once you start struggling with their quality metrics its hard to win back your position. Budget cuts occur too, an addition 5 members were let go at the beginning of 2023

Pros

- Decent salary (if you live in LatAm) - Weekly pay - You don't need that much experience to enter - Remote work is always a plus

Cons

- No job security, you can be dropped at any moment with no warning. - Extremely high rotation, most of the people that were there when I joined had already been replaced by the time I left. - Ever-increasing goals that get harder and harder to meet within your normal shift. - No communication with your managers, I only heard from them when I was assigned to their teams. You will also get reassigned to new teams very often, for seemingly no reason at all. - No benefits (you're a contractor). - You have to install their tracking software on your own computer.

Pros

They pay on time. Of course if they approve all every-10-minutes-taken screenshots/photos and your keystrokes within 10-minutes interval windows are not rejected. If you want to be sure - work an hour more. But noone will pay for this extra hour :P

Cons

Do you remember Stanford Prison Experimient? My feeling was I was the part of such thing. Micromanagement. Even pico-management. You won't believe until you see it. It looks it is like this on every level. Managers do not care. They know they are micro-managed by their managers, so only KPIs matter. The more stupid the better. What is important is a number. I know that some people believe that a number will say you everything. Old 60s school, yeah. Fortunately proven well, it doesn't work. Everyone is aware they are here just for 5 minutes. So do not try to improve anything, just obey stupid rules to get your next wage. Another thing is "constant crisis culture" (or I would rather say: "lack of culture"). You are constantly underperforming, even if you do mirracles the feedback you get will be: could be better. They trully believe in such people management. I will repeat: Top management trully believes such an approach works! No hope. Get your money and run. Nowadays in post-pandemic times there is a lot of better opportunities for work from home than this sweat factory.

Pros

The work is good, when you live outside the US, mostly in a developing country, the salary is a great way to improve your life and for your family. There are technical challenges that enforces you to learn new things on the fly and make you to increase the experience and deep knowledge of the tools and technologies very fast. There are very brilliant technical people working on the company then for sure you are going to learn a lot of them. And is quite normal been implement or exploring new technologies in some teams, others are stuck in maintain some important SaaS services, then there is not too much room for changes.

Cons

From time to time the upper management likes to run strange experiments, create 12 hours work shifts, changes in how the performance is calculated. Change certain technology from one day to another. New metrics to track your performance. Sometimes seems everything is more focused in show these ideas works that properly deliver value for the company. The tracker is something that has been discussed around, if you focus in your job and deliver, there is not going to be any problem. And the time that you work can be see as effective work, then to deliver daily 8 hours mean you need to spend a bit more time in the desk. There are no extra bonus or additional benefits, and is quite normal that somebody gives you a two weeks notices from the sudden because you didn't fit a metric or they need to cut people of the team.

Pros

Remote work, flexible work hours.

Cons

I worked at this company for 7 years and witnessed its ups and downs. It used to be a cutting-edge company, a leader in remote work, but over time it started to decline. During my time there, I met many great people and professionals from various fields. Unfortunately, most of them no longer work for the company. The reason for the decline is twofold: 1. The business model is to acquire dying software products, provide minimal support, and make money from a shrinking customer base. It's important to note that there's no focus on selling good and profitable software. 2. The top management's poor behavior trickles down to all levels of the company. Employees are treated as mere "resources" and their well-being is ignored. They can suddenly duplicate workload without adjusting compensation, switch employees to a different project in a day with a different technology stack and expect the same results within two days time frame. They deceive and manipulate, for example, by saying "shrink to grow" when there's no actual growth. KPIs are always aggressive, and even if you meet them, next quarter they will be increased, without any compensation for sure. The consequences of this for you as a new hire are unfortunate: 1. You'll mostly work with outdated and irrelevant technologies. 2. The software and codebase you'll be working with are outdated, have poor quality, or are technologically limited. The knowledge transfer process is also lacking, leaving you with a "black box" that nobody knows how to manage. 3. The size of the team is adjusted every quarter according to the shrinking customer base, and because this happens across all projects, they'll let you go instead of reassigning you to another product. They call it "shrink to grow", but it's a lie - there's been no growth in 4 years. 4. The remaining employees are left with an overwhelming workload, but their expectations and compensation remain the same. For example, a product that was once supported by 3 engineers (each was pro in his area, and supported a set of product parts written in c++, Objective-C, C#, java), may suddenly be supported by just one person who is expected to have the same level of knowledge and output for the same compensation. 5. The team environment is hostile. Each new member is a survivor of previous downsizing and views you as a threat. If your performance surpasses theirs, they'll be fired. Professional or emotional support is non-existent, and senior employees often do performance/PR reviews, using subjective reasons to decrease your delivery rate and decline your work. So, for those who consider joining this company: I strongly advise against anyone joining this company. Unless you're in dire need of money and are willing to be treated poorly, having your brain manipulated and wasted and have your hard work disregarded. FOR CUSTOMERS of products under the ESW CAPITAL umbrella, my advice: RUN!!! And plan your migration to an alternative product as soon as you hear that your product has been acquired by this company. You will experience declining quality and support, as well as increasing costs if you stay. Because the company business model is to let the product die. So anyway, you will switch, sooner or later.