Q&A With PTC Employees

Benefits

That I see occasional glimmers of, "There is no way this is sustainable" from technical people. I occasionally see glimmers in management, but those who have the glimmer don't last long or are shunted aside. I've seen it happen twice in only a year.

There are huge differences among departments and the way employees are treated

IoT growing as is partner organizations. Unfortunately, there are still multiple partner organizations, which poses problems. The other difficulty is while trying for landgrab, individual and business unit goals limit doing things without immediate return.

More diversity, they are mostly white, male, Republican.

Limit isolation within a business unit; if that unit wants to treat you like a mushroom, doing a good job won't get you noticed outside your group.

You need to fight for it

Good, its a fair balance...

It depends on where you work

Social activities like sports, going out, etc

How much I’ve learned

Car allowance

Nothing, it was all good experience, even the negatives

Being good at advertising what one does; communication; resiliance

It’s hard for most but some people have had it really easy just because they fit the mould (male, in their thirties, no kids, self-promoting, well-connected, constantly hustling)

Don’t know really...if they are interested, probably sooner

Business casual

Two years if deserved

Your carreer stops if you prioritize your children. Very few women in management. And even less with two or more children.

Workaholics who would place PTC above everything

That every day is probably my last. They do no fire employees. They lay them off, so there is no possibility of wrongful termination lawsuit. There is no union protection. While there is a Performance Improvement Process on the books, it does not get used in practice. "Sorry, you've been laid off. Budgets, you know. Bye." It is more convenient to management in the long run.

Be competent in your field and articulate. They only do interviews over the phone.

The feedback process is non-existent. Management says it, you do it. Attempts to reason or negotiate, even from a technical perspective, are unwise and likely to get you shown the door.

I hate every minute of it, because I see that they will never get to the root cause of their technical problems, because all of the technical problems are rooted in their management problems.

In the year before I took up with PTC, I was learning to play the guitar, published my first book, taught classes, and had a moderate but enjoyable social life for an introvert. Since joining PTC, I work, eat, sleep and repeat. The stress level has put me on anti-anxiety medication, and my wife cannot sleep because I'm 'leaking stress' all over the house. I'm now a hermit, and that is not an attempt to be funny. I mean it literally.

Not challenged in the sense of given a hill to take and then given the tools and time to do it work. There are a lot of challenging problems to solve, but all of them take a backseat to fire-fighting and solving the same problem over and over in different environments by different people or teams or strong personalities.

There are no team outings in Cloud Services. Team members are too geographically diverse.