software engineer

administrative assistant

php developer

marketing project manager

laborer

Pleasant Solutions

- I'm really enjoying Pleasant, and have been here while, and have learned how the business and culture operates.

- Pleasant Solutions is diverse, a "rapid growth IT company", fast-moving flexible, with a start-up business mindset. 

- Day-to-day I've found there are new and interesting challenges to tackle, usually fast-paced, new technologies, and often, multiple projects and many tasks to handle. 

- I've been able to dig deep into my industry/domains, learn new market machinations and niches that I can now better understand, and comprehend additional factors needed for a strong, growing company

- It's a positive environment where I see that employees own their work and expand their skills in a variety of areas.

- Since employees are busy, I believe HR concerns are probably a lot less, with minimized drama or politics. That's a huge plus when coming from other work-places including the public sector. 

- However, I've found management to also be very supportive and flexible, to a degree I haven't experienced in other private / public companies.

- I've been often fascinated to learn from the different skill-sets within the business, because of the breadth and depth that the company goes to, to compete in complex challenges, and with speed and efficiencies of business. 

Their mascot is the humming bird: fast, efficient, and pleasant.

- I have the feeling that the work-place is safe and accommodating and that employees have a sense of accomplishment.

- There can be some overwhelming thoughts at times when the targets are aggressive and seem very unlikely, however, management remains understanding

- It is not real if there's never a time where things or people don't "go south" on bad day, but I think that's normal everywhere, and we're able to still able to ask questions, resolve problems, and come to understand and push forward

- It is quite impressive month-to-month to interface with staff and see the work and hear them explain their projects.

- When I listen to the management I see that they are forward thinking for the long-term, which is contrarian to common thinking. I believe they have a strong and very detailed accounting team that provides them with a strong company foundation which will eventually visibly expand in size globally.

- The CEO and the company employees have many innovative market disrupting ideas, successfully delivering internationally. The organization is quite flat and they are still cultivating leadership and supporting an employee-base with an ever-expanding capability.

- I've seen that the company has learned from / moved on from an unfortunate internal breach (publicly documented) which, thankfully, the company was able to catch with external partnerships. 

- Now the feeling is relief that this situation was resolved, and I feel much more confident that I am safe and that we're seeing good, higher quality, trust-worthy replacement staff coming in.

Low salary. You are expected to quit after a while. You will not get an annual review or a raise unless you ambush the CEO. If you try to schedule it properly, without ambushing, it will get moved back months and may never happen. I was informed from someone in headquarters that it took multiple months for someone over there to get their annual employee review. In 2 years, I haven't had one. Different project managers and leaders have different styles of management. It can be very jarring having to mentally switch between the different ways project managers try to "lead." Especially if you stay for more than a year and you are on 3-4 projects at once. In 2 years, half of the project managers I worked with were decent, the other half were not. Some of them need to have basic things explained to them over and over again. Many people I have spoken to understand just how bad things are, but everyone is either too scared to say anything to the CEO or they don't feel they will be listened to. Everything is compartmentalized, so that developers are as out of the loop as possible. Regardless of whatever they told you, truly interesting projects come a few times a year, and you will likely not be chosen to be on the team. Everything is timed, and every piece of code is reviewed. Because everyone is on multiple projects, you could wait days for your code to be reviewed by the reviewer because he is doing something else. That could result in you having nothing to time. Every new developer in my office has no clue who their direct boss is. When this satellite office opened, we speculated for months who our boss was, and I am still not certain if the person we think is our direct boss actually is. That should tell you how little communication actually takes place.

A recent security breach that management chose to withhold from employees has reinforced that their delusions of infallibility hold back what could otherwise be a great place to work. Roughly five months after the fact, taking no responsibility for the breach of their internal systems, management reluctantly informed former employees of the potential that their personal information, kept on hand long after the cessation of their employment had been compromised.

As a previous review mentioned, the nit-picky, big-brother-esque work timing policies ensure that most employees will need to be in the office 45-50hrs per week in order to 'clock' the glibly-called 'only 37hrs' per week of timed productivity. Anything less will result in disciplinary action, but anything additional has no reward whatsoever.

Benefits are next to non-existent, besides a often un-staffed massage therapist benefit that is often far more trouble than it is work, and can result in disciplinary action if their poorly written and oddly-implemented policies surrounding the 'massage benefit' are not followed precisely.

As for salaries, the developers are typically underpaid compared to industry standards and have to work for free on "crunch time" in addition to the already-long hours when projects are behind, or over budget.

If you are considering working for the so-called Pleasant Solutions... I highly advise you to reconsider. This company is a dumpster fire of high-level incompetence, paired with excruciating micro-management, led by a CEO who has no business managing other human beings. 

The company is shrinking, with a high employee turnover rate and downsizing galore. Most people with any level of expertise or competency are either fired or quit. If you work for Pleasant Solutions, be prepared to have all of your professional expertise minimized. You will be given tasks that are the equivalent of a chicken pressing a lever to receive a piece of corn. You will be given no opportunities for professional growth, and in fact opportunities for growth will be explicitly withheld. If you suggest improvements to any part of the company, you will be ignored, or contradicted, and most likely even reprimanded.

The benefits are laughable. Forget about RRSP matching or other corporate perks: instead, you will be given instant noodles and gummy worms in the break room as a form of compensation. If you can retire on gummy worms, then all power to you.

Steer clear of this one, friends. It may look tempting at a distance, but I can promise you, you are worth so much more than this. Keep looking, and a much better job opportunity will come along for you. Pleasant Solutions is a dead end road and a completely toxic work environment. You can and will do better.

This place is not recommended.

The pay is below market and there are zero benefits (health, dental, whatever they tell you). They pay you monthly at the end of the month to keep you desperate.

Everything is timed and must be "timed precisely". Bathroom breaks/lunch is not included in the mandatory (and vehemently watched) minimum 37 hours per week "timed" and minimum 41.25 hours per week "on-site". They will demand an answer if you do not meet both of these minimums. It is indeed clocked to the second. This is a stressful place with little trust from management. Project managers will watch their projects' timing very closely and will hound you for their own answers if you go over-time on any issue they deem excessive. This is in spite of some of them lacking any development skills of their own. They are scrutinized by management and therefore scrutinize you.

Development is mainly in C# with little chance for learning. They have several internal projects that are a mess due to the capricious decision-making by the CEO. Recent projects indicate the company has taken on more than it can swallow.

Don't subject yourself to this place. Better offers will come along.

Had a great experience working at Pleasant Solutions (Edmonton office). The interview process took about two months—started with an easy online part, then a 1.5-month wait, followed by an in-person interview with the owner. He was friendly and honest. The final technical interview was long (a few hours), mostly coding, and I liked the questions.

Very nice place to work. Every developer gets their own office, plus super flexible hours. The product is really interesting to work on, and the onboarding process is well thought out. You start with a training project to get familiar with the systems (code repo, issue tracker, etc.), then jump into real work pretty quickly. My advice—ask questions! Everyone is friendly and helpful. Very talented and professional team. Management is also really accommodating—if you need something, just ask.

You’re learning as you work, so you feel useful right from the start. I left for personal reasons, but overall, it was a great experience. If you like coding, it's definitely worth considering.

You end up working between 9 and 10 hours to clock 7.5
Bathroom breaks are on your own time
Be prepared for spontaneous timer checks by the owner
Only benefits are a sometimes stocked kitchen and a monthly massage
You will be asked to 'donate time' (yes, free time on top of working long hours to clock your necessary 37 hours a week) when projects are in crunch time
Salaries are below industry average
Atmosphere of secrecy and fear from management
Turn over seems high - people leaving and being let go

Work is interesting - neat projects
Co-workers (developers, sales team, BAs) are great people

The projects are interesting, you use the newest tools, there are always people around to help.
You can work as independently as you want, or as part of a team. There is always someone who can teach you new things. It's not a bad place to grow your skill-set.

However, you get nickle and dimed on your time. You have to bill against a project for it to count towards your weekly hours. So no time for stack overflow, learning, etc. They don't offer benefits either.
If I wanted to work as a contractor/consultant, I'd expect to be paid as one. Unfortunately that was not the case.

Project management is non-existent. Any social contact is non-billable time, lunch and learns aren't even paid.

I was not certain about accepting a job (they offered) given the reviews I saw here... it took me less than half a day to realize that the relatively small number of reviews here relative to the large number of employees in the company was for a reason.

This place has a lot of happy employees and I'm definitely one of them. All the work I do is meaningful and I get to shine at what I'm best at rather than doing low importance maintenance stuff. In short, the things I do matter.

Everyone here is very friendly... plus I get an upbeat vibe from almost everyone here, they care about their job as much as I do and it shows.

It took some getting use to in the beginning to get familiar with their time tracking system, but I actually like the time tracking system very much as it adds lots of flexibility in managing your work hours(better work and life balance). Management is great especially the CEO, very approachable. Everyone is very friendly and helpful. Lot of unique perks like snacks and massages, etc. I didn’t have prior experience in the position I took which most company requires, and they hired me anyways which I was very grateful for. Also their response to COVID-19 pandemic was very timely and considerate for employees which demonstrate they care about employee health and safety. 

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Software engineer 20 salaries reported	$59,225 per year
Administrative assistant 1 salary reported	$27.24 per hour
Php developer 1 salary reported	$62,226 per year
Marketing project manager 1 salary reported	$67,499 per year
Laborer 1 salary reported	$17.50 per hour

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