Pros
Good for people who are used to live and work in warzones.
Cons
More than a "Consulting" company, Capgemini Engineering (former Altran) is purely a Body Shop company. What's intriguing is that, instead of treating their assets (their employees) well, they treat them like disposable garbage. As result, their turnover rate is considerably high. Work environment is of desolation: people walking slow, demotivated and easily irritated by the daily stress. There's absolutely no sense of acomplishment working at Capgemini Engineering, as your your daily routine will be basically problems, bugs, covering bugs and implementing "Frankeinstein" (or "Crazy Go Horse") solutions. All the projects I had contact did not had the simple basics of documentation. If a new project starts for the same client, management will try to use whatever they can find, complain that the current documentation does not attend to the basics, change a word here and there of what they have, and voilá. Once a year they eventually remind that they have to properly do this activity, but they'll push this to the max, until some audit appears on the horizon, and there they'll send you to work unpaid extra hours to try to fix this. Until then, you have to ask if anybody in the project knows how some implementation works - with lots of "we don't know, we weren't here from the beggining" as reply. So, you'll have to debug the tool to confirm its current functionality (and also because of the amount of frequent new bugs it gains every sprint). Once the more experienced team member in the project is gone, you'll be lost in a sea with sharks. The only documentation they care about (and even those are managed with some delay) is the one they compel you to sign about trainings you never had (and which you may be requested to create). Stories specifications, by the way, are based in stories of imagination: a couple of lines (and I do mean "a couple of lines") and it's up to you to guess what has to be done. On the best scenario, they'll write a few more words, but always not enough to reach basics. Of course, in the end the client will complain and there'll you go again to do some more never-ending, never-paid extra hours to redo the task. Depending on the country you have to answer to, during these situations be prepared to hear some bad language at loud volume during the calls. In some projects, tests are performed in a way that even graduate students wouldn't do so (sometimes they don't even care to write a Test Script at all). And when - by a miracle - you have a project with a good Test team, the process is frequently "outlined" by the Manager's orders to make sure the software will be delivered under the surreal deadline they sell to the client. "Quality" seems not to be a concern to them: Sales will lure any client with the most impossible promisses and deadlines they can come up and let the bomb explode on your lap. The only important thing for them is to deliver and bill. Project Managers barely have the basic qualification for the role. Their activities most of the time are directed to micromanagement and to say "yes, sir" to anything the client requests (and no matter how wrong or delusional the client is). In addition, be prepared to pass some part of your day gathering evidence that you are performing your job correctly. It'll be a common thing your co-workers trying to input fault on your activities, even for things you or they are not involved at all. Depending on your Manager and the situation, sometimes even the evidence will not be considered. You're there to be their scapegoat. They take the "do more with less" quote to its max. Ron Carucci presented a good point in his Harvard Business Review article, saying "Diluting the focus of an organization by overcommitting resources institutionalizes mediocrity and cynicism. People feel set up to fail". Believe me: working at Capgemini Engineering is a daily sensation of failure and lack of any acomplishment. Everyday is about a new bug or a bad implementation - all result of their "quick win" mindset. It's embarassing to deal even with their own tools, which has an integration between "bad" and "null", is not user-friendly and keeps failing. In your contract there is a term indicating that they can allocate you on as many projects they think you'll be able to attend (not caring at all if you actually can attend to extra demand), and so they will assign you to more work whitout even a previous warning: simply out of the blue you'll receive a meeting invitation about something you have no idea about, then find yourself in a room with people on the same situation and then some Manager starts to distribute tasks for you to start working - without even communicationg the Project Manager of your other project or your Team Manager. At some point, they'll demand you to interview some candidates, but in the end it'll be another obnoxious, innefective bureocratic task, because even though you clearly point that the candidate is not adequate for the role (sometimes, for any role), they'll hire the person. The income is below average (depending on your role, considerably below), and so it will be as this is part of their internal politics. They'll do whatever they can do pay your salary under some sort of tricky "benefit" classification (there are public declarations of the former CEO regarding that), clearly to pay less taxes. They'll also do whatever they can to not promote you or raise your salary. As an item of your annual evaluation, for example, they'll make you help in hiring someone from the company. Yes, you didn't read wrong: although you're a Developer, they'll oblige you to use your personal time to search for someone around, indicate that person to the HR and hope that this (poor and naive) person will become an employee, in the hope of you not having your evaluation grade unfairly diminished. And the HR's return about your hiring indication takes months and lacks transparency. Also about the evaluation, as soon as you're hired they'll designate some sort of "Team Manager" that is not necesserarily your Project Manager to be your responsible in the company - and an elbow between you and the HR. But this "Team Manager" is not someone dedicated to "manage" people, because Capgemini Engineering overloads these persons with project managament duties and whatever else they can, so it'll be a quest to be able to get a simple meeting or return from your "Team Manager" about any topic you present. This person will simply not even care to validate or review the Curriculum you have to input manually by yourself in one of their lame systems and will be designed as your annual evaluator. But, the evaluation itself is considered of your Project Management inputs and your attendance to the (each year more surreal) standards that they require you. You can be evaluated on a range from 0 to 5, and Capgemini Engineering (former Altran) has an annual quota for the good grades: with that, no matter how great you perform during the year, you'll receive a "3" grade - which will limit you on receiving any raise or promotion. So, in practical ways, your "Team Manager" is like an upper-management pawn who's there to make sure you will not receive one more cent from them. If you are designated to travel on behalf of the company, be aware: they'll propose you a daily fee that does not cover the minimum costs on more. And there's the possibility of you not receiving the refund of the expenses you had on behalf of the company, as the money will somehow "disappear" on a Senior Manager "budget". We receive a weekly newsletter from HR/Communications with generalities and suggestions of activities. One of these suggestions, once, was a tutorial on how to make a standard paper airplane - I swear, I'm not joking! Sometimes they also communicate a "partnership" with a hotel, etc., but the discounts you get by being a Capgemini Engineering employee are usually worst when comparing to the ones you can get by your own on the Internet (Booking website, etc.). For all what's matter, you're treated like a loose animal on the field, with the Managers shooting you while ordering "smile for the client!". From the day you're hired, the only deliberate valid guidance HR gives you is in how to fill their Timesheet system (which is clearly not made for the ones who perform the inputs - UX is really something on a very low standard in this company) - so they can bill the client a.s.p. - and leave you to deal by yourself with their other not so friendly tools. And the on boarding documentation is outdated by default. The only feelings I have from the time I spent there are of disgust for the management and disrespect with myself for throwing some precious period of my life into a sewer.
