Pluspunten
Work from home. Field engineers can negotiate a good salary if they are confident. Commission and bonuses are *theoretically* lucrative. (you will never close a large enough deal for this to matter)
Minpunten
Where to begin? If sh!t flows downhill, it indeed starts at the top. Development is driven by the owner of the company. His concepts of information technology are driven by what his left and right hands tell him, and whichever buzzwords catch his fancy. The software's foundation is based on principles from more than 10 years ago. There are some misleading comments here about Argent's allegedly great software. It seems these commenters were indeed brainwashed by the owner. Argent's software was good, but that was more than 10 years ago. The current solution doesn't scale very well. The idiosyncrasies of this company have been covered before, but are repeated here: an internal messenger application, which is the owner's way of communicating with you 24 hours a day. Summons will be issued at random times, 4 in them AM, 10 in the PM, regardless of time zone. You will receive a cordial email with the message "ARNI, NOW". There is the native CRM developed by the same people who brought you ARNI. Both products look and work like they were written in 1995. This primitive feel for the business software extends to the monitoring products as well, check the screenshots. If you are especially lucky, you will receive a drunken call directly from the owner, late at night. He will then proceed to rant about something someone else did. The conversation will end when you make it clear you are not the person he is ranting about. The company, while technically run by the owner, is really operated by his left and right hands: the stooges in Hong Kong. The stooges operate more like a high school sorority than professional management, gossiping about who did what, and who to hurt this week. The sisters literally spend their days plotting who to ruin in their own company. If these stories sound too crazy to be true, rest assured they are so crazy they have to be true. Argent will promote itself as a company "free of corporate culture". Just more of Argent's horsesh!t. The company is small, shifting between 30 and 60 employees, of which 3/4 are employed in Hong Kong as cheap administrative labor. Yet this tiny company has corporate backstabbing to rival the greats. All bad things flow from Hong Kong in Argent's case. The company's lawyer: yes, this tiny company needs its own dedicated lawyer to stall lawsuits and enable the next iteration of the company. No one iterates like Argent! Whether it is a shield from constant litigation or yet another tax dodge, as an employee of Argent be prepared to sign a new employee document once a year. To make it clear, you still work for Argent, just another incarnation. If the sisters in Hong Kong sounded like pleasant people, they are saints compared to the lawyer, once described as "the most despicable person I have ever met". Bold words considering the source of the quote had already met Argent's owner, and the sisters. Argent truly believes in second chances. I've never seen a company fire so many people, and rehire the same people less than a year later. Whether its to meet the bottom line in a given month, and then having to meet a need later, the door at Argent is revolving. But if you were fired, and rehired, rest assured at some time of the owner or sister's choosing, you will be fired again. Support is handled by the same engineers who handle sales support. So if you are a customer, and you call in for support, and its obvious the support engineer is a salesperson, you know why. All the engineers, yes all 5 of them, are doing demos. Or health checks. Or are onsite, or maybe 1 of them was just fired. You'll get support when they get back to their home offices. At Argent, you will be forever reminded you are in instantly replaceable piece. If the owner had it his way, all of his account managers and field engineers would be recent college graduates making minimum wage on a contract. The only reason it hasn't happened is it would make Argent an even bigger joke than it already is. If you somehow stick, realize there is no room for advancement. More accurately, everyone at Argent is a VP, but only the CEO, CTO, CFO and lawyer matter. This has gone on long enough, you need to make your own decisions. A friendly hint: the owner of the company forces his employees to write favorable reviews of the company on this site, and other job review sites. It isn't hard to see which reviews were forced and which reviews were written by the owner himself. The review from people who have left the company are unanimous in their disdain for the company, which is a warning in itself.