After a couple weeks of working with them, I noticed that everyone I was working with was relatively new and that some folks seemed to be putting in a lot of extra hours. I asked the owners how overtime works and was told overtime is offered occastionally but that primarily they work based on deadlines and that if you don't meet your deadlines, you will be expected to stay late and work...
I have experienced this before as I have over 10 years working experience, 6 of which were from salaried positions in a business environment. When working on salary, this expectation is normal however when you're paid hourly, you typically are supposed to leave when your shift ends and should never be expected to stay and keep working without pay. This seemed like an immediate red flag to me as well as the fact that there seemed to be a high turnover rate but no clear reason why.
I learned in the following months that if you're not careful or assertive, they will trick and pressure you into deadlines that will cause you to need to work late in order to achieve them. Most times I was able to negotiate the deadline in order to make it fair for me but there were times when I was put on the spot and made to agree to unrealistic deadlines thus forcing me to skip lunches and put extra time in to achieve their wishes.
They will pay you hourly and set your wage well under national averages. I was making $16.48/hour for 35 hours a week as a Junior Developer making my take-home salary well under $25k a year.
The owners of this company will seem nice at first but if you go against them in any way, they will behave unprofessionally and disrespectfully towards you and expect you to just stand there and take it with no reaction because they have the mentality of "I'm the boss and can do whatever I want to you".
They will always turn the situation against you and never admit their faults or offer an apology afterwards. I had two serious incidents with the owners of this company and both were completely unwarranted and unprofessional and left me feeling severely under appreciated and disrespected. Even though both events occurred with witnesses around, they still maintained their position that I was completely in the wrong and they were perfect in every way.
These people are taking advantage of their employees and as the headline states, do yourself a favour and just keep looking for other opportunities. This company is not worth it in the long run.