About PointWest Technologies

[pretenred1]

so wlang programming exam?
ok ba suweldo dito?

[koopz]

hey now...

pointwest technology is a nice company to start with, especially if you are a fresh grad, yup, the company is small, but you'll definitely learn a lot coz the senior guys there are really well experienced in the technology they are handling, J2EE, .NET name it and they have guys that kick-a@#!! on those areas. WIth regards to stability, definitely stable imagine the company starting from 3 developers and to almost a 100 in less than 1 and a half year. with regards to the pay, they have godd starting pays, of course it depends on the level you are hired for. The working environment, very cool.. very laid back and at the same time responsible to the work. Well, in the case of OTs, OTYs is a given to IT companies, so you better get used to it, but it pays a lot at the end of the year once you get ur fat performance bonus.

bottom line, if u will work with pointwest, if will be a helluva good experience... trust me on this, i used to work there... and it was F-U-N!

[bosstl]

OTYs are a given, but not required if i may say. and there should be a limit to how long and how frequent these OTYs should be rendered. maybe for mainframe apps, it is quite stable, not much OTs. But a close friend of mine got fed up rendering extended OTYs to the point that he just goes home to change clothes (well, that's a bit of an exaggeration already. hehe). He was into java or .NET that time. kinda understandable why he has to, but the fact remains that most of those rendered hours were not chargeable as OTs but were required of him just the same.

Pero syempre, iba iba naman lahat tayo ng mga experiences eh. maybe he was just in the wrong group.

At least a good point that i could say is that in such environment, mahahasa ka talaga.

[koopz]

well, its not actually OTYs if you look into it. All excess of 8 hours in a day are charged as leaves, right? so if you come to think of it, you'll benefit from that too, may be not now as the project is on going but later in the project or when you resign from the company, coz you'll be accumulating tons and tons of leaves and of course these are all converted into cash... well you can also use them as leaves and maybe take a month off (paid) to rest.

well, if you are into dev that is a reality that there will come a point that you'll be just stayin in the office the whole week.. working! well, as i said its reality in dev, but you know what? every development team in any company share the same situation.... so better go to prod support or maintenance if you dont wnat to experience that...

that is just my two cents...

[bosstl]

i've been into both dev and support projects, so i guess i have a background of what i speak of. and not all in excess of 8 hours are chargeable (or can be converted to future leaves). there's a minimum number of hours before you can charge them as OT, if i can recall it right. and also, i think there's such a thing as VLs to be forfieted when not used within the year. I don't know if this still holds true. so in a project, when the year comes to a close and you have piled up enough VLs to spend a long vacation somewhere, it is not necessarily that useful especially when your team is still trying to meet up a deadline. it is either forfieted or converted to cash, depending on the decision of the managers which is more beneficial to the company. Unfortunately, not all managers are that good natured.

anyways, we're getting off topic already. i am not speaking ill of pointwest. i'm just stating that benefit wise, it is not that great of a company.

all i'm trying to say is that pointwest (as well as SVI) is a very good company to start out with, but not that great to spend most of your IT years in.

I hope you get my point. anyway, this is just an opinion.

[Dacs]

I had my interview a while ako, and nanaman ako, kasi yung interview nag focus dun sa pagiging magna ko.

Oh well, charge to experience nanaman

[bosstl]

what do you mean?

[Dacs]

Magna kasi ako, magna nine years sa college. So yung interviewers, they focused on that.

Siempre the only thing that I can do is to sugarcoat all of those

Anyhow, nagparinig na rin yung HR kanina na "they'll be ranking the applicants and only the top 5 will be hired" and "I'll be up against other applicants with honors and extra curricular activities". In as much as I wanna be optimistic, paringgan ka ng ganun, siempre you really need to have a reality check, that my chance to be hired is close to nil

OK lang yun, baka mag board exam na lang ako and praktisin ko na lang pagiging chemical engineer ko

[bendos]

PROS:

1. Chance to be sent to the US.
2. You’ll learn a lot especially in j2ee.
3. Very laid back
4. Super flexi
5. Smart casual
6. Salary will depends on your skills and previous company (joke !!!)
7. Overtimes are convertible to leaves.
8. No bond.



CONS:

1. The salary for trainee is a bit low compared to others.
2. No HR.
3. No Medical card except for PhilHealth which I think is government mandated.
4. High turn around rate. (in short daming nagreresign).
5. Salary will depends on your skills and previous company (joke !!!) (inulit ko,di ko kasi alam kung sa pros or cons sya eh..hihihihih




TIP:
During your salary negotiation, be assertive, kasi kung tingin nila kaya kang baratin, BABARATIN k ****..hehehehehe…

Kung *** naman ay fresh grad, Pointwest is a nice company to begin your career.

[koopz]

bossstl...

u said your friend worked for pointwest right? not you, so you dont have any first hand experience how things are being done there right? so you cant really say that pointwest is not that great to spend your IT career coz you really dont know what is like being in the company. well, honest truth, the pay is not that high, but it is arguably competitive with other IT firms. But the thing is, people are always driven by the fact that they need to get paid really high when your in IT, i mean, there is no room for investment for new stuffs/technology that you are going to learn... but then i could be just speaking for myself.... but back on the topic... what am trying to say is that you cant put that premise that pointwest is not that good of a company to spend your years at,if you dont have any first hand know-how with it. If you are basing your judgemnt to the fact that pointwest came from svi and it will be like svi then, you might want to double think about it. ive been to svi too...

i may sound biased ..... but..... i really am biased..

[bosstl]

bossstl...

u said your friend worked for pointwest right? not you, so you dont have any first hand experience how things are being done there right? so you cant really say that pointwest is not that great to spend your IT career coz you really dont know what is like being in the company. well, honest truth, the pay is not that high, but it is arguably competitive with other IT firms. But the thing is, people are always driven by the fact that they need to get paid really high when your in IT, i mean, there is no room for investment for new stuffs/technology that you are going to learn... but then i could be just speaking for myself.... but back on the topic... what am trying to say is that you cant put that premise that pointwest is not that good of a company to spend your years at,if you dont have any first hand know-how with it. If you are basing your judgemnt to the fact that pointwest came from svi and it will be like svi then, you might want to double think about it. ive been to svi too...

i may sound biased ..... but..... i really am biased..

okay i got your point.

but lemme ask you one thing... can you really say that it is that different from SVI? one thing i know for certain, the reason why i didn't accept their offer is because i saw SVI only with a new name, and with lesser benefits. I know from the fact that i was made aware of it when I was contemplating in joining them.

Did I say that it is not that good a company to spend your years? I said it is not that great (practicality wise) to spend MOST of your IT years in this company alone. And practicality dictates that one should look for greener pastures, compensation as well as, as you said, room for newer and improved technology. And why would you want to acquire newer technologies? of course there's always the usual answer of self-satisfaction... but basically what comes in mind is increased marketability. That's how it goes in IT right?

As I said previously, I'm not speaking ill of pointwest. Did I say anything bad which is not true? I did say it is a good company to start out with cause you'll indeed get a good headstart.

[koopz]

bosstl

... well let me ask you this, have you been to svi? have u been an employee of svi? to tell you the truth, svi was a really cool company back then.. but that was way back when there were less than 150 employees. but after the reign of the new management, svi was not that great and everything after that went down the drain..... so if you are comparing pointwest with the new svi... those are definitely two different things. that is why i said it is totally differnet from svi... and again i can say i knew all of this, coz ive been there, man. Now, what you got about these companies are only hear-says, right? So again I will tell you this, you cant put an assumption that pointwest is NOT that GREAT (did i get it right this time?) to spend most of your IT years coz youve never been there, buddy! Now, my point...people who are reading this thread will also assume that also coz even though you said that it is a good place to start, people will tend to think --- why bother applyingto this company if they wont stick with it anyways? so that is not fair to the people in pointwest. and I feel sorry for your friend who resigned from pointwest, if his reason was really mostly on OTs, all i can say is.. if you can't stand the pressure and all excess hours(OTs and OTYs).. stay out of the development... coz no matter where you go...no matter what company, you'll always have that in the dev team, unless of course, you dont have any projects coming in...

.... yun lang po... and im not trying to start a bash-o-rama here...just want to raise my point.

[Wolfman]

basta ang alam ko sa pointwest, mababa lang sila mag offer.
gudluck sana ma offer ka ng mataas.
Tama ba naman yun yung tinatawagan ka nila, offer same as sweldo before or slightly higher as in super slight. hehehe

[bosstl]

don't worry. no offense taken.

and yes, i came from SVI and spent some years of my IT career in there. before 911 and a year afterwards. Somehow I saw the good and bad times of that company. About pointwest, the benefits I'm talking about were not hearsays. That was what I was told during my interviews and offer sheet. If any of that changed (or improved thru the years, say 2 years perhaps) then good for them. I'd rather not discuss those OT's anymore, because, as you said it, i'm in no position to say that there are a lot of OTY's to be rendered, since i didn't work there at all and all i got was just a first hand experience of a close friend.

I apologize if my remarks tend to taint the image of pointwest, but i should reiterate that was not my intention. I'm just stating my opinion. I should say that people there are good, or should i say experts in their fields. I know many of them personally. That's why i have no qualms recommending that company to young starters. See my posts. I just stated that compensation wise, there are better companies out there. I don't know why you are not getting my point. Besides, you yourself are no longer connected to pointwest, right? (just kidding around... don't get offended)

[bendos]

basta ang alam ko sa pointwest, mababa lang sila mag offer.
gudluck sana ma offer ka ng mataas.
Tama ba naman yun yung tinatawagan ka nila, offer same as sweldo before or slightly higher as in super slight. hehehe

di naman...mataas naman pag galing kang SVI, hehehehe...(joke lang..bka me magcomment bigla eh..)

[koopz]

... yeah, im not connected with pointwest anymore, but people there know why i left... its not the money, its not the people and definitely its not the work load.

u said youve been connected with svi just before 911 right? so that is why you are so unenthusiastic of spending IT years with pointwest... well that figures!

anyway... enough said...

[bosstl]

hmmm... maybe you're right. i did assume somehow. i assumed same managers and relatively same people equates to same setup. o well.

enough said too. i'm shutting my mouth.

[pretenred1]

nagexam ako kanina..
mahirap yung math nakakabobo ang hirap naman kasing bumalik sa basic......

[bosstl]

may time constraints yung exam noh?

if yes, the key to exams like that is make a quick browse and answer only those that can be answered at a glance while you are browsing the questions. yung tipong di mo na mashado pag-iisipan pa yung sagot. skip all the rest. pag natapos ka at may time pa, balikan mo yung relatively easy sagutan. kalimutan mo na yung alam mong mahihirapan ka. kasi, in exams like that, all items share the same wieghted point, 1 point for each item only. so walang kwenta kahit pinaghirapan mo nang husto yung mahirap na questions, kasi 1 point pa rin lang yun.

[sneaker23]

I may ask guys
nasa magkano ang range ng salary ng software engineer trainee nila?