Extremely frustrating work environment. You are expected to do the work assigned to you and nothing more. Fall in line or get out was the experience I had while working for Phocas.
It was all too common to have to constantly redo large chunks of work every several months because of technical debt which only grows. Development leadership showed a pattern of disinterest in best practices and collaborative work. Instead preferring to impulsively switch between frameworks with no discussion from the stake holders. On multiple occasions, the head of development would produce a multi-thousand line PR, riddled with bugs and hacks, and expect the team to approve it. There was absolutely no room for discussion or feedback.
To make matters worse, these large PRs would consistently introduce catastrophic problems which would inevitably result in the team repeating the process again. You see the problems, you see the limitations, but you have no voice. The mess of code would be merged and then the development lead would step away to another project and leave you to pick up the pieces they just dumped all over the floor. Until things got bad enough again and the process was repeated.
Attempts by my team to take ownership over the product and break this cycle were met with strong pushback from non technical management. Management has put all of its chips into the stock of a single stretched thin developer. There is no room for dissent. Do the work or get out. Because of this philosophy the most senior developers on my team resigned.
Burnout, anxiety, and self doubt were common themes among my teammates.
My team tripled in size with absolutely no plan for how to onboard everyone and no strong development road map.
If you believe code can and should be beautiful - Phocas is not for you. The approach to code at Phocas is "make it work as fast as possible." Even when time is not of the essence - make it work as fast as possible. Tech debt is irrelevant. You will not be exposed to industry best practices.
Also, if you are considering employment at Phocas you should know there is a large initiative within the company to be recognized as one of the best places to work. I think this has driven employees to fill Glassdoor with generic 5 star ratings. So take some of the more corporate sounding reviews with a grain of salt.
Finally, I found the compensation extremely uncompetitive. Teammates who I spoke about compensation with felt the same. Phocas is not interested in investing in its employees - only growth in order to get more money from investors.
