Job Title: Manager
Location: Wayland, MA
Submitted on: 05-Oct-06
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Business Outlook
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The outlook of the company is mixed in the sense that the owners will
profit if they sell before they get caught up in past scandals. There
are very few besides the inner circle of employees that stand to
profit. The company's association with several Connecticut state
agencies was it's bread and butter for awhile through 2001. If you
recall, Governor Rowland was in office and Softscape lobbied his IT
Chief to get a leg up on any competition in the state. We know what
happened to Rowland. He resigned in disgrace on June 22, 2004. The
company also plucked Terry Borjeson from his state position in CT to
further entrench themselves in the multi-million dollar gravy train
know as the State of Connecticut. There were several tense meetings
with other government agencies from other states who were continually
displeased with the product that Softscape created. Instead of having
productive problem solving meetings, the brass at the company would try
to gloss things over and offer the customer an expensive lunch. I truly
believed then that the company's poor reputation would finally catch up
to the arrogant indifference that the company had towards existing
customers. The State of Arkansas (Pulaski County) is the most recent
victim to Softscape's failed promises. 'Pulaski County has paid
$451,196.52 for a software system that does not work,' Mankin-Mitchell
wrote in a letter to Softscape, Inc. President, Hank Watkins. Such a
quote makes me wonder how many 'software' licenses they cooked up to
get that figure of $451,196.52.
The company also had trouble meeting payroll and expenses and had no
clear understanding of when it was fiscally responsibly to expand its
operations or increase it's staff. In order to save money they had a
common method of firing salespeople when they were due to be paid and
would also not pay them on their commissions. They would never put
anything in writing when it came to requesting a rate of commissions on
a sale. They used their own 'variable' rate. The variable being they
pay you what and when they want or they don't pay you at. There were
at least two former sales representatives that were involved in a class
action lawsuit and I believe there are more. It is my understanding
that the suit is asking for more than $75k. There are several other
legal problems that the company continues to deal with. It will likely
be a matter of when, not if, a State Attorney General's office of
consumer affairs gets a complaint from a bilked state agency.
Most employees, if they could speak freely, would express there
unhappiness with the company and how it runs. It doesn't take more
than a few days, or weeks at the most, to understand that you made a
big mistake accepting Softscape's offer of employment. The new job
search begins once you've come to this realization inside of the
Wayland office.
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