Pros
Aspen has decent holiday PTO, a wonderful Christmas company dinner, and a decent healthcare plan. For those entering high-performance computing, Aspen can offer rapid responsibility growth and hands-on experience. Employees with thick skin who are comfortable navigating a demanding management environment may find opportunities to grow, though stepping up is not always rewarded consistently.
Cons
I worked at Aspen Systems for four years. During my tenure, the company experienced over 100% turnover. This is not because high-performance computing is challenging—it’s because Aspen is an unhealthy place to work. The single greatest risk to the company is its turnover, and leadership consistently failed to acknowledge it. Instead, turnover is blamed on bad hires or bad processes, even though the pattern is consistent, persistent, and painfully obvious to those working inside the organization. 1. CEO Leadership The CEO is heavily over-involved in many projects, regardless of expertise. His involvement consistently adds pressure and uninformed demands rather than support or direction. Disagreement is discouraged through dismissiveness, belittling communication, and revisiting past mistakes to undermine you as a person - not your ideas. Over time, employees learn that compliance is safer than stepping up or contributing honestly. What makes this worse is that this behavior is fully enabled by the leadership team and routinely excused as “management style.” There is no meaningful buffer or protection from it. 2. Punishment & Negative Reinforcement Aspen has a consistent pattern of negative reinforcement and collective punishment. Entire teams are penalized for individual issues, fostering resentment and fear rather than accountability or growth. Policies, perks, and bonuses are frequently tightened reactively in response to isolated incidents. In one year alone, multiple addendums were added to a 100+ page employee handbook—primarily outlining new ways bonuses could be reduced or revoked. The culture communicates distrust first and correction second. 3. Overtime Culture Overtime is ingrained in the culture and modeled from the top to such extremes that managers are often too overworked to collaborate or lead effectively. Employees are required to constantly “manage up” just to move projects forward yet are blamed when leadership delays or last-minute pivots stall progress. Leadership consistently kept teams understaffed, while expecting employees to absorb the additional workload. 4. Limited Advancement or Raises Raises and promotions are routinely denied, even as responsibilities expand significantly. By the time I left, my role had grown far beyond what I was hired for—including full-stack development, conference logistics, and hiring support—yet I received no title change, raise, promotion, or cost-of-living adjustment. The actual reasons my supervisor gave for denying me a raise before I left were 1) the work was simply “expected,” 2) I wasn’t “senior enough,” and 3) I didn’t work enough overtime. 5. Misguided Priorities One of the most frustrating aspects of Aspen is how resources are allocated. I personally witnessed multiple well-deserved raises denied, followed by the loss of critical employees, while significant investment continued to flow into unpopular internal projects that lacked team support and damaged morale. -- At Aspen, morale is consistently low, and conversations about leaving are frequent and openly discussed. It’s a cautionary place to work—and a company that continues to harm itself by refusing to confront the real cause of its turnover.