Autosoft Employee Reviews about "new product"

Pros

The company could have a lot of potential is you remove some of the “key” execs.

Cons

…just about everything else. Good people are literally chased out the door. There is zero appreciation of the employees from the CEO. The CEO does not trust anyone therefore, he micromanages through middle management and spends his days listening to phone calls and reading people’s messages to “catch people” as opposed to focusing on the release of a new product that has been promised for 8+ years, and still has no formal release date. He also doesn’t want anyone else’s input because his is far superior and nothing is ever good enough. Not to mention, there is hardly any room for growth within the company. They ramp up gifts and “swag” when things like “Best Places To Work…” voting time approaches and reach out to employees that they feel they could bully that would leave favorable reviews (usually out of fear of speaking the truth) to sway them to say something positive on glassdoor to balance out the negative (and true) comments. If you’re considering applying for a position here, ask about the turnover rates. Shocking is an understatement.

Pros

The best part of my job was my direct supervisor. He had the respect of his team and we all drove success. I loved the people I worked with.

Cons

The CEO doesn't trust his management team to get the job done. Promises were made to dealers that weren't kept with new product. From the entire HR team quiting to top leadership, I would run to a new company.

Pros

It's astonishing to me that Glassdoor allows themselves to be gamed by this company's transparent attempts to gloss over and dismiss the brutal (though true) accounts of its disastrous management since the arrival of new product management. Autosoft had an incredible team in place, both from a product management and software development aspect. For the nearly 3 years I worked there, it was the best job I had ever had (and my career was nearing 20 years). Brilliant, generous colleagues and supportive management; I was happy to come to work every day.

Cons

Then the President/Owner decided to bring in new product management, and he had the remarkable ability to come in at the end of an amped-up staff meeting and gradually purge it of any remaining energy. The boss had his yes-man, and anyone who disagreed knew where the door was. As a result, most of middle management, many in upper management and nearly the entire product development team opted to exit through that door. No accounting of this brain drain can perhaps adequately convey the value of the lost knowledge—simply devastating.

Pros

Free Food Free Tshirts Cool Co-Workers that Share Your Same Issues They pay me every 2 weeks and with COVID I cannot leave yet

Cons

"We have never had to do this before" The words of a CEO and HR team that was very ill prepared and literally flying by the seat of their torn pants. Employees had their positions eliminated (it happens right?) due to "company restructuring. They decided to move $$$ to development type areas (so if you are reading this and thinking about joining the techie side BEWARE MY FRIENDS!!!) and wanted to let everyone know they were gone in a Zoom meeting. Problem is not everyone was in the meeting. Some found out when their access was unceremoniously cut off. "Oh your manager didnt call you?" NOPE he was a coward and did not do that! Promotions are based on something crazy because there are people on this proverbial bus that ARE NOT in the right seat at all. It is comical how some people are laughed at and ridiculed DAILY and they have no idea how bad they are at their job and hated. CEO micromanages because he is bored. Every Salesforce entry is looked at and the CEO takes hours going back and forth. If you lose an sales opportunity be prepared for 75 minutes of emails! Wonder if he knows sales team members don't close opportunities because of that and just lie to their managers as avoid the emails of shame? Look at the other reviews here. The CEO writes paragraphs in response to reviews? REALLY? Who does that man? Middle and upper management is decent is some places. Tragically horrible in some. No one really knows who in charge. Finance? They think so. Sales? They wish! Implementation? Maybe should be but not strong enough right now. Trying to bring a new product to market. 5 years and counting and NOTHING! 2022 is now a real date. Competitors laugh and point at them.

Pros

Autosoft at least attempts to be remote-friendly, although there's some asterisks to this. They are open to locations in different timezones and non-US countries, which is always a good look.

Cons

If I had to sum up Autosoft, it's that everything you do day to day is at best ten times harder than it ought to be, at worst a hundred. As a software shop, it is glaringly mediocre, and overall not a solid place to build a career nor a solid skillset. The company likes to call itself agile but it's really in name only. The company is currently driven by a pure waterfall deadline to release a new product later in the year, and every discussion, decision, and deadline is dictated by this one date. As one may imagine, it falls prey to all of the issues of waterfall. Estimates are impossible, priorities are constantly and consistently shifting, and there's absolutely no capacity to address risk. Anything that would take a little extra time in the name of code quality is suspect - proper architecture, and especially testing is ignored at best or shunned at worst, and phrases like "tech debt" and "unit testing" are nearly taboo. The underlying architecture is severely flawed and because of the waterfall approach, no one is ever seriously prioritized to fix these issues - as a result tons of time is wasted on basic bugs, slow toolchains that cause more harm than help, inconsistent implementations, and worst of all, a local environment so unstable that developers can literally be blocked for days. All of these problems have been brought up, and many engineers have solid solutions, but no one is ever prioritized to solve them because that would jeopardize the waterfall release date. An agile coach was brought in to help resolve some of these issues but the effect has been negligent at best - even if the dev teams change their processes, it doesn't matter when the rest of the organization doesn't adopt agile. Blockers are supposed to be handled by management but I can't point to a single instance of an issue being unblocked by them. There are some downright bizarre technical decisions. The tech stack itself is ... suboptimal at best. The techs themselves are fine but implementations are so inconsistent and flawed, and understanding is so limited. The organization used to have an architecture team but all of these people were let go or otherwise left, and were never considered valuable, presumably in favor of all teams just magically "working it out" on their own. The most puzzling is a database team in which database engineers are required to do all database work for the application ... despite all other engineers being employed as full-stack. Many of the engineers here have strong back-end backgrounds and would have no troubles implementing what amounts to basic CRUD solutions, but are stuck waiting on singular database team resources, sometimes for multiple sprints. Again, many issues have been brought up, but they go into a black hole, never to be heard about again. Many other reviews have mentioned the "yes-man" culture, especially of the CEO. I can't speak for him but there definitely does seem to be an air of "comply or else" within the organization. There is very little trust built between individuals and teams. Many engineers have great ideas, and are anxious to try and bridge gaps for the betterment of the organization, but these ideas are often completely lost in the wind. If you join, you may be inclined to share your own perspectives, but do so at a risk - at best, prepare for lots of resistance, and at worst prepare to paint a target on your back. More often than not, what happens is individual developers become one-person armies - with good ideas that are never consistently shared or supported, the end result being a muddled mess of a platform and a whole lot of demoralization. Be prepared to not be supported if you have problems - being let go or stigmatized for not conforming is absolutely a thing at Autosoft, the organization would rather just cut you loose than seriously work with you on significant issues. And forget about actually growing into another role - there is absolutely no growth opportunity within the engineering department, everyone is just a software engineer regardless of skill. And the turnover that other reviews has mentioned is absolutely real - for a company of this size, it's alarming how many technical people leave each month. In the pros I mentioned that Autosoft is friendly to remote work. This is true, however be prepared to adhere mostly to an EST schedule since that's where the home office is based. Some teams are more open to discussion about it, but the conversations are theoretical at best. No support is given to the remote employees - the company refuses to provide more than a laptop and dock - no basic loadout or home office stipend - so if you don't have your own setup at home, be prepared for a suboptimal experience or to invest your own money in your home office. The company does try to have events that include remote employees, but there is an air in all communications that most perks are for in-office employees only. And be prepared to never meet your team - the company cancelled its annual holiday party in order to meet the deadline, and refuse to work to periodically invest in getting remote teams together, despite that being one of the keystones of successful remote teams. TL;DR: This is just not a good place to work as a software engineer at any level. You can find a more immersive team, a more enjoyable platform, a friendlier group of people, a more-accepting culture just about anywhere. The negativity and mediocrity just ... radiates from everyone and everything at this company. I'll end with a story. My first interview with the company, the manager's first question was "so....what's up?" as if he had absolutely no plan for an interview - I proceeded to conduct most of the interview. The second round was a technical exercise we could barely complete because it was based on their local environment which was having significant performance issues that day. I remember thinking "this is a company that will offer me a job and I'll tell myself all these red flags are in my head, but I'll be absolutely wrong", and that's precisely what happened. If you choose to apply and join, at least as an engineer, do so with extreme caution. You can do better.

Pros

Wellness perks Healthy snacks in the office all the time

Cons

If you recognize the words “24 months” then you know you’ve worked for Autosoft. That’s all that’s been said for several years. Twenty four months is long gone and still no product. This new “product” that is supposed to be coming out supposedly in 2020 will not turn this company around. Having a DMS that is beyond old has shaped what dealerships think of Autosoft. They claim that it will have the only new DMS system within its’ competitors within the last 10 years which is not true at all. Obviously who claimed this doesn’t know anything about the competitors. The goal is to gain dealerships every year not lose them which has happened for 2018. Sales is struggling because the software is so old. A change should have been made 10 years ago. Support is a disaster in itself. Employees are leaving faster than ever. Never should support employees work hard to service the customers while support managers are standing around talking and there are calls waiting in the Que. Make the managers take calls. If you pride yourself in great customer service then act like it. Just cause they are managers doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have to take calls especially when customers are waiting to get their call answered. Stop promoting employees because they are buddy with another manager or came from the same company before. Seniority is not always the best way to go about it but employees that have several years of Autosoft experience should be getting considered more than someone who just started.