software engineer

senior software engineer

product support

project manager

director

CentralSquare Technologies

CentralSquare continues to make changes without realizing the implications of what they're doing. Yes they may save money on salaries by layoffs in the short term, but they're going to lose customers and revenue since service/support will continue to lag the industry. They're getting rid of employees with years of industry and company knowledge. But hey their loss, we'll just go to competitors. Giving a list of people who need to be cut to Mid-Level Managers with no explanation is disgusting. Imagine developing a team for several years, coaching them and becoming great friends with them, only to pull them from under you without any explanation. Not only this, employees let go were almost all on target to achieve their MBOs. Evidently nobody is safe.

For a little context on what happened with private equity and CentralSquare. A firm like Bain has access to cheap credit and likely used it to purchase/merge TriTech, Superion, and Zuercher. Bain likes to target profitable, slow growth market leaders, which those companies were. Once the buyout/merger was complete, that's when the cost cutting began. Multiple offices were closed following the merger, and many knowledgable people were let go immediately. Yes, this naturally increased profit in the short term. However, in the long term, CentralSquare cannot remain competitive because where is their profit going? You guessed it, likely to pay off Bain's debt from the acquisition. It took about 2 years before the impacts – reduced customer service, inferior products – to become fully apparent. Being in the public safety industry, LEOs need to ensure their products are working properly in mission critical situations. Unfortunately products are breaking, tickets are taking longer than ever to get resolved, and communication is suffering due to staff reductions. Your agency needs to add some additional RMS licenses? Sorry can't get you that quote because we can't find the person to price it out. Oh wait they probably got fired. This isn't the service former Zuercher, TriTech, and Superion customers signed up for.  It's only going to get worse as long as Bain is at the helm. Worth noting of the twenty-five companies that private equity firms bought in the 1980s that borrowed more than $1 billion in junk bonds, more than half went bankrupt. Funny how history often repeats itself.

But hey everybody at Bain Capital has Harvard Business School degrees, so they're apparently pretty qualified to move employees around like chess pieces. Fortunately cutting my small salary may allow Bain's Associates to pick up a few extra drinks on their corporate cards Saturday night in Boston. So at least someone wins? Maybe Bain Capital's Leadership could swallow their pride, admit they destroyed 3 once great companies with a failed merger, and sell what's left at a loss. Bain are in over their heads and have no business operating a company in this sector.

This used to be a great company that allowed people to work remotely, had good benefits, and valued its employees and customers. Under the new management it is horrible. People are quitting without having another job, that should tell you something. 

Under the new management the company treats its employees like garbage and it doesn't seem to care about its customers either. The company is losing lots of employees, some being fired because they don't allow to work remote anymore, some are quitting with or without another job, some are being laid off. All this while they say they can't hire the people they need. This leaves lots of customer without the support they need for their issues, but this doesn't seem to be a concern for the company.

The company has hired lots of new young people, they have some very good ones, programmers, doing QA, which seems like a waste of a resource, while they have some working as programmers who make you wonder if they really are programmers.

Can't really trust what management tells you in meetings either. They say one thing and then change their minds later and do something else. From what I heard from new hires, can't trust them in the interviews either. They tell them they will be working in some cool technology and then they end up working somewhere else in some older technology.

Worst place I have ever known or heard of as far as employees. I even thought maybe all these changes are because management wants to bring the company down for some reason. 

Not family friendly at all. If you are starting out and you want to start somewhere for some time, this may be a good place. If you have a family this is not a good match.

I'd like to say something good so it's not all so negative. The building looks nice and they have a Starbucks there. No cubes though

This company has some really cool technologies. Personally my team was absolutely amazing. I really enjoyed the work I was doing. But there are so many problems with the upper management. This place should be on your never list. I was doing so many things, we didn't have a PM for about a year, no scrum maste r, no real direction. When we finally did get a PM we were still minus a scrum master. So I took upon myself run those ceremonies, in addition to software development. I was also heading up a number of initiatives and I did a lot of great things for our product. I received a total of a 2% raise during my tenure here and 1/3 of ourNEXT YEARS bonus. The advance on our next year bonus was sold to us as a second chance for the last years bonus. We were also told we should be grateful that the powers that be even considered it. This place has toxic borderline villainous C-Suite execs and there doesn't seem to be any slow down to it.

To be honest, I loved the work I was doing so much that I would have gone another year with minor raise. But they needed to do a company wide layoff to pad their numbers. Short-term gain for long-term problems. Which translates to you, the employee, as short-term wage stifling and long-term stress.

Steer ever so clear of this dumpster fire of a company. The execs have literally no idea what products are doing what and have no intention of doing so. They are there to squeeze profit out of the people that work there, lay them off, record high profits and bounce to their next victims. 

This company is worth less than the sum of its parts due to inconsistent leadership and direction.  They have all the pieces but no plan to put them together.

CentralSquare was formed by merging four major industry vendors, and those four companies were each formed by merging multiple companies.    The merger that formed CentralSquare created massive turbulence;  customer support suffered, C-Level executives have all exited by choice or force, products have barely been advanced in several years, and by the time anyone in leadership figures out how to fix what is broken they leave or are replaced.  

Leadership is so focused on fixing and supporting old products that they have neglected to figure out how to move forward with new products.  The company claims to be investing 3x more than any investor in the cloud.  If that's true, they have flushed that money down the toilet because there have been such poor results.  This has left the company exposed to new competitors that are 100% focused on advancing their own technology without the burden of managing outdated systems.  

For my experience, management is respectful of its employees.  

Upon starting at Central Square Technologies, formerly Superion, as a "product support specialist," I was given the absolute bare minimum amount of training for an incredibly niche software that only handful of people actually use that also happens to be over30 years old.

You are expected almost immediately to know everything there is to know about a software that is not only outdated, but mismanaged on a developmental level as well as a systemic and customer-facing level.

There is absolutely no communication between the levels of support. The Help Desk is treated as infantile and disregarded until cases becoming a flaming disaster and a director or manager needs to be involved. Cases frequently sit untouched for days or weeks on end because they need specialized care from one of the deeper departments that house consultants and developers, but are refused to be looked at because they "dont make money for the company" or are deemed as "not worth the effort to help" the support desk.

Since switching to a new CEO, there have been sweeping changes at the executive level for the worse. 

During the middle of a pandemic, the worst pandemic this country and the world have faced in the modern era, the company laid off hundreds of employees on a random afternoon.

Stay away from this company at all costs. Do not waste your time.

I've never worked at a place where people cry on such a regular basis. The upper management is micromanaging, intimidating and  ungrateful. Everybody else is so discouraged and down, even people who moved here from other states and haven't been here a year yet are looking for new jobs. It seems like we all want to leave.

I think the company really only cares about profits anymore. It's such a shame, because this used to be an amazing, family-friendly place to work. This merger just took place and already they have announced the closing of at least 10 offices. All the remote jobs are being discontinued. Hundreds of people are being laid off. In their place, CentralSquare hires people straight out of college with no experience. All the product knowledge is being lost and yet we're expected to support the new products from the merger. Our customers are police and local governments and really need our products to be supported correctly, but I'm afraid we're going to lose our ability to do this to our best ability.

I will say, if you're a new grad, this might be a good place to start out. They definitely hire new college grads, so you could get experience here, if you can make it through a few years of dysfunction. After this place, every other workplace is looking up!

I worked with this company for over 20 years, through no less than 6 name changes. Like a bad relationship, things started great! Upper management actually cared about their employees and clients. There was a tangible feeling that you were doing important work to help build better communities across the USA.

Things began rapidly declining in the past few years, with multiple rounds of layoffs and "restructuring." Upper management began suffering from rapid turnover. Despite doing yearly "employee satisfaction surveys," nothing ever changed for the better. Teams were decimated. Products we spent years developing were shelved, and a year later, they'd start developing from scratch again on the same types of products. Clients started leaving like crazy, and I couldn't blame them. They deserved MUCH better!!

This year, they decided to lay off entire teams of employees and send their jobs overseas to people who have no clue what they're doing. Even the severance packages were an insulting bad joke, especially for employees like me, who had over 2 decades of experience and product knowledge. Point taken: employees don't matter anymore.

On a positive note, I worked with some great people and clients over the years. The PTO policy and benefits were decent, but nothing really special. 

Although CentralSquare is the result of 4 companies and 2 venture capitals coming together, it should be viewed as a startup. Product strategies have been scrapped multiple times, teams have been shuffled and re-staffed multiple times, leadership has completely turned over until middle of last year, and many basic mistakes have been made at all levels.

On the bright side, unsavory leaders are finally being held accountable (at least in some areas). It really depends on what team you're on and where you are in your career. A deeply experienced, high performing leader may find a lot of basic building blocks missing here (hence why you should treat this as a startup). But if you are looking to move into software to grow a bit or are ready to try something new in a unique segment of the industry, it's a place worth considering. Just be aware that it really depends on what team you land in.

STAY AWAY. This company has a great mission that helps the communities we live in. But Upper level management is absolutely terrible. There is no accountability with the executive teams and they have gone out of their way to make this a miserable place to work. They refuse to listen to anyone and are driving this company into the ground. Morale around the company is at an extreme low with many openly and aggressively speaking out in meetings against this leadership. There have been many who have attempted to talk and reason with the executives but have not been listened to. This was once an enjoyable place to work but has turned into a dictatorship. Current CEO doesn't care at all about his employees and has created an environment of speak out and you could easily be fired. The CPO even keeps a record of those who speak out with valid complaints. Executives have been caught lying in department meetings and there is no punishment or apology. The executive team is highly corrupt and only cares about watching out for themselves. They are more than happy to sacrifice clients and employees that get in the way of their personal ambition. Stay away at least until this current executive team is replaced.

CentralSquare as a company is actually made up of several smaller software companies with their own unique products that have been merged together into a conglomerate. As a result your experience working in support can vary greatly depending on the product you work with. Some teams may have a very relaxed culture, while other teams may see you being overworked and understaffed.  In my case we see a lot of tickets, but have the appropriate manpower to handle them. 

Over my tenure I have learned quite a lot about the technical side of supporting a B2B web application. Unfortunately though the skills I've picked up haven't translated into a better position or much higher pay. The company seems to be in a permanent hiring freeze, save for tier one support positions which they're hire several with the intent of having them endlessly apply band-aids to problems (mainly our somewhat unstable software) instead of paying for dev resources to fix the problems in the first place. Any vacant position that isn't a tier one seems to never be backfilled. At the very least WFH and unlimited PTO is nice.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
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