BBD - Good employer

semaphore said:
I worked there for 3 1/2 years, extremely high pressure project with a very public client. It was fun but i valued my free time more than i vauled what they offered, i found their salaries not to be market related i am earning double now what i was getting there and this is about just over a year ago i was there.

There entrance assessments are piss easy.
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Indeed they are. I also didn't take the job because these guys seem to think they own you 24/7. I told them I have a small child and family time is not negotiable. Also they wanted to pay me less than I was earning
 
Sonic2k said:
Indeed they are. I also didn't take the job because these guys seem to think they own you 24/7. I told them I have a small child and family time is not negotiable. Also they wanted to pay me less than I was earning
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That's an unfair comment. The high pressure project semaphore was referring to was just one specific one amongst many. Most projects have regular working hours and a lot of the employees are parents.
 
Went for an practical there a few years back, and they gave me a PC with no internet connection. Looked at them and asked if they were serious.

"Yasss, because when you work you don't have internet".

Chuckled and left.
 
Brenden_E said:
Went for an practical there a few years back, and they gave me a PC with no internet connection. Looked at them and asked if they were serious.

"Yasss, because when you work you don't have internet".

Chuckled and left.
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You need the internet to write for loops? :wtf:
 
Brenden_E said:
Went for an practical there a few years back, and they gave me a PC with no internet connection. Looked at them and asked if they were serious.

"Yasss, because when you work you don't have internet".

Chuckled and left.
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If it was Visual Studio were the help files installed locally at least?

I can understand a potential employee not wanting you to just copy paste an answer from Stack Overflow but depending on the code you have to write F1 can be useful when your brain decides to have the odd senior moment in the stress of a test.
 
Kilgore_Trout_Redux said:
If it was Visual Studio were the help files installed locally at least?

I can understand a potential employee not wanting you to just copy paste an answer from Stack Overflow but depending on the code you have to write F1 can be useful when your brain decides to have the odd senior moment in the stress of a test.
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It is not a difficult test and if you need the internet to complete it you have bigger problems. I cannot say if his version of events are truthful but my suspicion is that the order of events went down slightly differently.
 
The test really just covers the basics, if you can't do it then you are possibly in the wrong job, maybe try project management/:p
 
When I managed development suppliers, BBD was one of them. Pretty much every company which body shops is a sweat shop and they are no different.

In their defense, although they pay poor salaries, they do look after their staff. I think if you are getting into IT, they are a good choice, as you will get good exposure.

Their senior staff is very skilled and if you have ambition you can go far, but just sitting back and not having initiative will leave you as a typist with a mediocre salary.

I would not join any body shop as a senior resource. You will be paid between 300-700/per hour and they will charge you out at around 1-2k.

They do provide good training, make sure that their staff work as long as possible by having junk food at work and they do throw epic parties for people to let off steam.

With the work pressure I have witnessed people being carried out on stretchers (heart attacks, strokes, panic attacks, passed out due to lack of sleep) and I never felt that this is worth it in a job.
 
You can't be a body shop and a sweatshop. If you are a body shop then you are working for and managed by the client. If you are overworked then the client is te sweatshop.

If you are running the project yourself like a lot of BBD projects are then you are not a body shop. Some projects might be seen as "sweatshop" work but BBD mostly got that label from disgruntled ex-employees that couldn't handle the SARS project (one of many projects). What we did on that project, btw, is the reason you get to file your return, have feedback in seconds and get paid the next day instead of what you had a decade ago.

And as for your junk food comment - those are vending machines. The only difference between ours and those of other companies is that the contents of ours is free.

...btw, saw two people pass out/faint at Standard Bank the last year. Not sure if they are slave drivers or if those are just really sick individuals.
 
Hamster said:
You can't be a body shop and a sweatshop. If you are a body shop then you are working for and managed by the client. If you are overworked then the client is te sweatshop.

If you are running the project yourself like a lot of BBD projects are then you are not a body shop. Some projects might be seen as "sweatshop" work but BBD mostly got that label from disgruntled ex-employees that couldn't handle the SARS project (one of many projects). What we did on that project, btw, is the reason you get to file your return, have feedback in seconds and get paid the next day instead of what you had a decade ago.

And as for your junk food comment - those are vending machines. The only difference between ours and those of other companies is that the contents of ours is free.

...btw, saw two people pass out/faint at Standard Bank the last year. Not sure if they are slave drivers or if those are just really sick individuals.
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calm down :p
 
Hamster said:
You can't be a body shop and a sweatshop. If you are a body shop then you are working for and managed by the client. If you are overworked then the client is te sweatshop.
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Of course you can be both: Company hires staff on perm- or contract basis. Company then runs time-and-material projects with clients and staff works +12 hours every day (= sweatshop, as the company is benefiting). The client is ripped off, as the employees will get paid a fraction - in most cases 30-40% what is actually charged to the client (and in some cases even less, as often overtime is not being paid).

FWIW - I have knowledge also about the SARS project and the multi-vendor participation as part of the e-filing solution and I agree, BBD was the more robust vendor and the others messed up epically most of the time.

With regards to the sweat- & body-shop comments, I have first-hand experience of how it was run, but this was a good 5 years ago and perhaps my comments are now irrelevant.
 
That survey is a joke, not to be taken seriously...
 
Hamster said:
Why?
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Try find the questions they ask respondents to see why. They're typically more interested in what policies the company has in place, rather than the experience and sentiment of those working there. And personally I've never found a correlation between policy and great company...

Source: I worked at BSG, who pretty much spent most of their year gaming DBCTWF...
 
benhart said:
Try find the questions they ask respondents to see why. They're typically more interested in what policies the company has in place, rather than the experience and sentiment of those working there. And personally I've never found a correlation between policy and great company...

Source: I worked at BSG, who pretty much spent most of their year gaming DBCTWF...
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I am one of the respondents. I've filled in that questionnaire three or four times the last couple of years.
 
Hamster said:
I am one of the respondents. I've filled in that questionnaire three or four times the last couple of years.
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Ok. Well I haven't for the last few years. But when I used to (for many years) the questions always used to be phased along the lines of "the company has a performance management process in place" (to which an honest answer can only ever be Strongly Agree), as opposed to a more telling "the company's performance management recognises and rewards the best performers" (less objective, but more likely to highlight issues). Might not be the best example, but illustrates the point I was making.

Are the questions now more likely to give insight? Or do they still reflect the thoroughness of the HR department first and foremost?
 
benhart said:
Ok. Well I haven't for the last few years. But when I used to (for many years) the questions always used to be phased along the lines of "the company has a performance management process in place" (to which an honest answer can only ever be Strongly Agree), as opposed to a more telling "the company's performance management recognises and rewards the best performers" (less objective, but more likely to highlight issues). Might not be the best example, but illustrates the point I was making.

Are the questions now more likely to give insight? Or do they still reflect the thoroughness of the HR department first and foremost?
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Those type of questions are still there. But there are questions about remuneration, work life balance etc.
 
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