It was good while it lasted - Anonymous employee Digital Signal Employee Review

I worked at DSC for a few years as an Engineer, and I have to say, their management was extremely talented. They were very effective at pulling in more funding, and even though we didn't ship many products while I was there, we were always assured of our market value. I think the last big meeting I was at, they said we had a valuation close to $300 million dollars and growing. So there was certainly no shortage of money. That being said, they were very efficient at handling money. They were very generous in giving stock options, and they said I would make out in the end. The raises were so much for us engineers, but we were assured it was only so we don't overspend. I only got at most 4% a year, so I can only assume the same was true for upper management. Raises also depended on what they expected and meeting those expectations, so they had really high expectations for us. I'm pretty sure the CEO only took a $1/year because he was so confident in the company. He really tried to not waste money, and I was quite impressed. The work itself was very fascinating, and it really kept my attention. I really enjoyed my co-workers, and especially management. Some would call it micro-managing, but I called it just good old making sure I'm not making mistakes. In fact, whenever my manager or the VP of engineering was not around to check up on me, I just didn't feel confident in my work. I had a lot of good and innovative ideas, and it seems it was the right environment to do something nobody else had done before. Management had a laser focus on getting the next software release out, so often times they didn't want to add any improvements because it might add some bugs. It was good advice. I just wish they had done more than one software release when I was there. They always said they were releasing 0.8, but it kept getting delayed. They're probably on 2.0 by now. I'd really like to complement HR. They were just outstanding. I really felt they were concerned about the employees and they had a strong disconnect from upper management and the CEO. So I feel confident if there ever was a complaint like "The CEO is making this a hostile work environment!" or "The CEO threatened to not give me a raise because I didn't give him my sandwich!" or "The CEO threatened to punch me in the face when I disagreed with him!", HR would have promptly handled it and informed the Board of Directors. They were also very diligent in knowing what was going on in the company, not just taking what the CEO and CFO told them.

Cons? Seriously? It's the best company ever. Biggest mistake of my life when I left. I saw another opportunity, and I thought the grass was greener on the other side, but it isn't. I wanted to reapply, but they don't seem to have any job postings as of today. In ten years, when it's stock is soaring, I'll still be sour about making the mistake to leave. If only I could be so luck to still be working there.

Pay is great, 20% above market. Benefits are outstanding, except you need to give 2 weeks notice before taking vacatons. Free lunch Fridays, casual dress code, flex hours. Challenging and interesting work.

Management is uncomfortable making decisions, always choosing to delay a project, won't take any risks. Management is self-serving, secretive, takes credit for success of employees. Root cause is poor hiring practices. CEO is a clown, used to intall security cameras so now runs a high-tech engineering product biometric security company?. CFO/COO was refugee from Blackboard.com as is IT guy, VP Bus Dev, VP Legal etc. New CFO was from beekeeping company. Seriously? No management understands product development or manufacturing normal practiced. Hiring mostly from big companies like General Dynamics after they layoff. Everybody totally obedient to executives or else just get fired with no payout, not even vacation. Layoff of 75 employees out of 150 on yesterday, after 19 employee layoff 3 months ago, when the CEO said layoff is over, company is financially secure,etc. so cannot trust management. Product is very much improved, but sale price is way 10X higher compared with competition, the sales people have no experience or contacts in the industry and cannot sell the product. Product is way buggy, fails in field demos, very much embarrassing. There are no sales expected for years, so there will be more layoffs or attrition as slowly goes down the toilet.