Cathal D.

If you just want answers, StackOverflow can be brilliant. Go on and browse until your heart is content.

However, if you want to be part of the community, get your battle gear on because this place is incredibly nasty! The trolls on here are not like those on Facebook or other social media platforms (and whether SO like it or not, they have enabled the site to become a glorified social media site for techy trolls). What seems to be a sizable portion of Users are really horrible, angry people, who are set off by the most trivial of things. They are akin to that a'hole in the bar who starts squaring up to you with "are you looking at me?!". This is SatckOverflow!

However, as with all a'holes they take their lead from somewhere, and that lead is from SO themselves. Throughout the site you can see high levels of obnoxiousness and arrogance. All in all one could strongly argue that the problem with SO is that the people who own and operate it are total a'holes themselves.

You don't even need to take my word for it, here's an article from SO themselves. The fact that it's over two years old and obviously had no impact says all you need to know about StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/

I worked with Cybercom for over a year, spending close to 100,000, so I believe I have reasonable authority to express an opinion on them. Before considering contracting or working with Cybercom, I would highlight the major issues I had:

1 - Actual Team Size: First off, I would question their claims as to how many staff members they have. We were continually told that it was many hundreds! However, having been to their office in Warsaw several times, I only ever saw twenty or thirty. I did question, and was told that they have multiple offices. I am dubious of this however, because on several occasions the team I was working with came across issues that they struggled to deal with. A company with hundreds of developers would have a huge brain pool on which to call in these circumstances, but this never happened. Instead the individual team members struggled on until they found a solution (not necessarily the best one, just a solution, and at significant cost!).

2 - Method of Working: Cybercom don't operate in the real world in terms of how they do things. They try to work EXACTLY by the book (It was like working with someone straight out of college). In an ideal world this is exactly how it should be done. However, we live in the real world, so some semblance of common sense is required. With Cybercom, there is no such thing. Once anything deviated from their robotic methods, the system would break down. So it broke down regularly!

3 - No Concept of Business: Cybercom have zero concept as to how business works in the real world. They certainly had little or no concern for mine. Their vision is very narrow and short sighted. They are I think, more interested in the "quick buck" than a lasting relationship.

4 - Short Sighted: From the outset, I requested that where possible 3rd party plugins should be used. However, they decided to develop everything from scratch, often with poor results, when they could have tapped into existing resources. I believe the reason for this was to squeeze as much as they could from a client as they could. In their stupidity however, they didn't have the common sense to realise that A. I would have spent the budget with them anyway, and B. A lot more would have been achieved, with a much better end result, and I possibly would still be working with them.

5 - Meeting Delivery Dates: In the 12+ months that we worked with Cybercom only ONCE did they deliver a sprint on time! I found this particularly irksome, because it was the developers setting the agenda (the tail wagging the dog!). While I understand and accept that for various reasons delivery dates can be missed from time to time, to only deliver one in the space of 12 months is unacceptable.

6 - Internal Issues: Once I had cancelled the contract, I discovered what may be the root cause of their issues: bad management. It turns out that they hemorrhaged team members. One has to ask themselves why would this happen? Are they disorganised internally? Is there a bad working atmosphere? Are they a nasty company? Whatever the reason, it points to bad management!

To be fair, they did do some good work, and one of the developers assigned to the project was excellent (although he left not that long after I cancelled the project, along with others who worked on it). I would say that about 40% of what I spent was invested well. The remaining 60% I may as well have given to the birds.

Cybercom are just not that good! Unless you have lots of money and time to waste, plenty of patience, like getting the runaround, and are not that passionate or bothered about your project, go elsewhere!

In a Nutshell: There are plenty of other companies out there who are more consistent, more professional, and will cause you a lot less anguish and frustration. Choose one of them, not Dot Squares.

Having read the reviews on this and other sites, I was skeptical about this company. While it is obvious that many of the reviews are fake, there does appear to be some genuine ones so decided to give them a go. I knew I was taking a chance however, because there are as many negative genuine reviews as there are positive. But as I was only giving them a small piece of test work, I didn't mind.

As you can guess by the star rating given, the experience didn't live up to what I hoped it would. At the outset, nothing is a problem, even when you probe them. They have answers for everything. It's very much the "No problem Sir", or "Sir we can do that, easy" type of response. So they give you a lead-time, you pay them the money up front and wait. A few emails are exchanged to sort of keep you in the loop, but not really. Then when the money runs out, you're informed that they need more time, and that's when they have you! You now have the choice, loose the money already invested, or throw more at it and hope that this time when they say "No problem Sir", they mean it!

All in all this company is amateurish, disorganised, and bordering on dishonest. They don't appear to actually know how Agile or Scrum works, and rather than use some industry standard tools, they prefer to use their own amatuerish inventions. Ultimately you may get what you paid for, but you may not! Taking on Dot Squares is a lottery. And unless you have plenty of funding, there is a very good chance you'll be buying a losing ticket!