An introduction to NepotiSoft

Since I have a huge interest in project management, and corporate environments, I should give some backstory about my bad experience. This post will just be a description of a company that I worked for about a year ago. My tenure there was exactly one year, and it will probably be the worst year of my working career. It's sad that I know so much about a company after one year, and that I have such a strong opinion. I know some programmers who were with this company for a few years, and I bet they'd have a lot more to contribute.

I won't use the real name of this company, as they are still in business (kind of). But we will call them NepotiSoft.

Why the name NepotiSoft? Because while this company will tell you that their main focus is software and IT-related products, their real focus is nepotism, and making sure that their family members reap any and all benefits before anyone else.

NepotiSoft had some beautiful offices when they hired me. Everyone had their own office, and they were located in a beautiful part of the city. We were around a lot off cool places in town, and it was a really exciting area.

When I hired on, the company consisted of: a CEO, a part time President, a CIO (who was also a developer), an HR person who was also the contract specialist/account, a marketing/sales person, a secretary, a full-time developer, a full-time tester/researcher/whatever you could find for this person to do (non-technical), and a full-time CSS/imaging guy.

During my tenure there, another 3 developers were hired (excluding myself), with 1 being fired and another being hired in his place. The CEO would also bring in the spouse on occasion to help with accounting stuff. I am assuming this was done so that they could give some more money to the CEO's family without it looking suspicious.

In my 1 year at NepotiSoft, we peaked at 13 full time employees. 4 of those were all family members. NepotiSoft is now working with 6 employees, with 4 of those being family members. They effectively fired all of their developers (excluding the CIO), which makes them a software company without an employee who is fully dedicated to software development (no split duties). We will get to an analysis of this in a later post.

The company like to publicly declare that they were a "Christian company." I have no idea what this means for a business(full disclosure, I am Christian). They liked to recognize everyone's birthday with a cake and a gift (usually a $25 gift card), and they would sing 'happy birthday' to people before cutting the cake (I always find this weird when done for someone over the age of 14 or so). They would always lead the cake cutting with a prayer (which I liked, but saw as potential to be very offensive). In the end, they would use this idea of them being a "Christian company" as a way to get employees to be nice to them when the company itself was being very unChristianly. It was a way to keep employees from being smart, and treating the company the way the company treated them.

That is a good enough description of the company so that later posts can be understood. The most important point is that the CEO, President, salesperson, and HR rep/accountant were all related, and are still employed despite the fact that they are a software development company without any true developers, despite the fact that the salesperson has never made a sale and that a 6 person company does not need a full time accountant/HR rep or secretary.