software engineer

tax specialist

intern

software test engineer

test engineer

Vertex (Pennsylvania)

I worked at Vertex as what is called a "Contingent" (yes, it was on our nametags).  Vertex employs roughly 1/3 temporary staff.  Ironically, many of the HR staff that recruit and hire talent are Contingents themselves.

The work here is easy.  The people there are generally friendly (friendly as deer in headlights).  The career paths at Vertex are not very good, mostly because the company has only recently experienced growth, therefore all of those types of career paths and "rising star" paths truly have not been developed.

I was laid off the week before Christmas.  I take issue with that.  My very last day at Vertex, after 6 mos., was on Dec. 19th.  Not actually the warmest, holiday spirit feeling - at all.  Additionally, my manager was a nitpicker and possibly a saboteur.  I would frequently have my work saved over in the server, things would go missing also.

The work environment is peaceful but so are many corporate environments nowadays where typewriters have been replaced by quiet keyboards.  The only redeeming quality of this company from my perspective are the staff.  I enjoyed so much being with the employees of the company and I was sad when I had to go.

I was informed in December my last day of Dec. 19th via EMAIL.  Yes, email.  It's hard to believe a company could care any less about the people actually creating the content being shipped to its customers, but they do!  My supervisor gave me his word he would provide a letter of recommendation, but during the last week he said he would not.  Take that what you will, but it's certainly an abrupt change, for whatever reason.  I was the 4th of my team of about 7 or 8 to go.  It's sad to see a company with arrogant management, you figure they are making money off of taxpayer money really;  all they do is report tax rates and profit off of disseminating that information.  

What you do here is basically mine that data through legislation and report it in excel spreadsheets which are then imported into databases, those databases then link up with SAP software which manages transactions online and retail so wherever the transaction is the correct taxable amount will be recovered.

The company or at least an individual in the company reportedly also owned a stake in Avalara (Vertex's only competitor) which might violate anti-trust laws.  Shouldn't the government be doing something like this?  If not, shouldn't the government be funding a competitive atmosphere to ensure nobody has a monopoly on this type of information?

I saw that Vertex was voted such a highly ranked family company recently in a prestigious poll.  Where I am here to give you my impression of the company.  The people are great and I loved my colleagues, even if they were real employees and I was only a "contingent."

Additionally, as a contingent I made $16.50 an hour but a fellow contingent working through a different staffing agency made around $23.

First would like to point out that I enjoyed my job here at Vertex but had to resigned due to various reasons below.

Despite the company's public emphasis on diversity, inclusion, and internal promotion from within, it appears that my manager may not have received the memo. Favoritism and nepotism seem prevalent, with contractors receiving preferential treatment over full-time employees. They are hired and promoted ahead of long-standing Vertex employees, even having the privilege of choosing their work shifts before more experienced full-time employees. Despite management offering apologies and assurances of improvement, promises often go unfulfilled.

It's extremely important to exercise caution when providing feedback through company surveys, as there may be potential for retaliation from managers when expressing concerns about direct report managers, supervisors or even directors. There seems to be an armchair manager advancing in the Vertex corporate hierarchy at the expense of colleagues, subordinates, and the overall team, displaying typical corporate power-trip behavior while moving up the ranks faster then usual at this company. This does make you wonder how is this possible? hummm? 

Since Vertex' houses financial data for some of the largest fortune 500 customers in the world, all aspects of hardware, software, & configuration were, in every sense of the word, Enterprise. Also, due to the fact that many customers required a 4 9's Service Level Agreement (SLA), applications could not be down for more than roughly 20 minutes a year. 

Since I joined the web services team before the 4 9's SLA was offered, I got to participate in evaluating, testing & implementing a majority of the solutions that allowed that.   For example, redundant F5 Global Traffic Managers & Load balancers, multi-site Active Directory domain (Production & DR), SQL Load Balancing & Clustering, Brocade (now Broadcom) Fiber, EMC SAN storage, vSphere, DFS integrated with Red Hat & Identity Management, SolarWinds monitoring, etc.  Suffice to say I learned alot and over the years gained valuable experience architecting, managing, upgrading & supporting Enterprise environments. 

I was also in charge of Security for the On-Demand team so that had it's own sophisticated architecture consisting of F5 Application Security Manager (ASM), ePo orchestrator to manage McAfee VirusScan, multiple WSUS servers, etc.

Vertex is extremely laid back. They are also extremely flexible. The only downside I feel is that our office is a cubicle maze; however, not all offices are set up with nearly as high of walls. I hear people but never see them, and it makes it really hard to reach out and meet other coworkers. 

Vertex does focus a lot on development. There are plenty of opportunities to grow there and many senior-level staff that you can learn from.

Overall, the company is fine..

There are three main product divisions within the company, and the one I am in is treated like an outsider. Management in my group feel that they have something to prove, and so bold decisions are made and short timelines breed an atmosphere of bad code/bugs/heartache.

Pros:
Coworkers are awesome people
Stability of a larger organization
Always work to do
Occasional free food

Cons:
Culture is very old-school corporate
New headquarters building isn't designed well for finding people/meeting rooms
Management (in our group) treats contracted employees better than actual employees
Management says we are agile, but we only borrow a few terms (sprint, definition of done, etc.)
Management is hesitant to admit fault

Vertex is a good company to work for and has been a great place to hone certain skills. However as I mentioned in my "con" its a flat hierarchy and there is very little room for advancement. There is also very little turnover therefore positions of interest almost never become available.

There is growth but it is at a snails pace which is good for stability but bad for advancement. I have nothing bad to say about the place but its not for everyone. I thoroughly enjoyed my cheerful colleagues and the inviting buildings to work in.

Proof read and edited marketing collateral and promotional materials while observing Marketing meetings held between the stakeholders of the company. Helped prepare materials for quarterly meetings with Board Members while working on list/database and analysis. Also, assist in work preparing press releases for the media, while assisting in various Marketing activities for the three Marketing Project Leaders. Worked with Internal Communications in taking photographs of company events and writing articles for company newsletter.

This software manufacturer has the opportunity to shine and become a leader. Quality of a product is developed through attitude of those who manufacture it. Quality should be developed through attitude and improved processes and procedures backed with facts from measurement. From management to "mail clerk", "quality" is an attitude. Discussion of developing a quality product, measuring the processes it takes to develop such a product and making changes to correct and improve processes are minimal.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Leaving there— the absolute worst job and people that I have ever worked with and worked for.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Dealing with all the drama. The promises made by them were never fulfilled and they didn’t want to pay anyone a fair wage.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Very drama filled, it almost feels like you’re back in elementary school with the way things operate there.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Very fast paced, many huge responsibilities and absolutely no appreciation or respect for the employees there.

I've been away a while, and I've heard that things have changed quite a bit since new management took over Legal. We had a great and supportive manager that was unceremoniously replaced, because he wasn't a lawyer, with a less supportive manager who caused some wide-spread trust issues, and who did not push back on Sales or Finance on anything.  I've heard that legal no longer reports to Finance, and that the new head of Legal has cleared roadblocks and has "righted the ship" and is supportive of staff, again.

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