I work at a company acquired by TransPerfect ~3 years ago, which I guess would now be considered a subcompany of TransPerfect. Everything was fine for the first year or so, when we were still allowed to work in our previous systems and tools. However, as soon as we were forced to migrate to TransPerfect's systems, the shitshow began.
- The systems and tools that TPT uses are very subpar compared to other software on the market. I'm not sure if the people developing the TPT software is completely incompetent or what the reason is, but it is mind-boggling to me that certain types of bookmarks cause DOCX files to not be convertible for translation, if you try to use regular expressions the conversion completely breaks down for some files, and even if you don't use any special settings, the re-conversion back to the original format after translation can fail even though everything looks OK in the translation tool. And that's just for DOCX files, other formats like XLSX, XML, and JSON all have their own shortcomings not present in other tools, and translation memories are a complete joke compared to better software.
- Expanding on the point above, going from a system that is mostly "upload and go", the workload for my team has skyrocketed, causing a small team to be even more overworked. There is literally zero understanding from upper management that our increase in tickets and workload is a direct consequence of migrating to a, compared to our previous software, nigh unusable system. Moreover, whenever we raise concerns that features in our previous tools that were mandatory for some clients are not replicable in TPT's software, these concerns are dismissed with comments such as "I don't understand why the client would want this, and we can't do this, so you need to find a different solution". You can explain something 5 times in the same meeting to some people, and they never understand or simply refuse to listen. Clients are also affected, and there is a growing frustration that the quality of deliverables has been lowered, it takes longer to receive quotes and start up translation projects, and there are often a lot of issues with formats such as XML and XLIFF.
- Low pay, non-existent raises. The only saving grace is that my country has a union and CBAs that were in effect before TransPerfect acquiring our subcompany, so at least some of us have at least got raises to slightly offset the impact of the inflation. The pay was on the lower end even before TPT acquiring us, but at least the compensation seemed fairer when the workload was more reasonable.
- Coming from a smaller company, it is almost impossible to get sufficient assistance from TPT colleagues as everyone is so specialized on their own thing, so if you need a comprehensive overview of something, you often need to ask 4-5 different people and combine their input to something that might work. No one knows if it actually will work though, so you'll have to spend hours testing, on top of all the other work already in your backlog. All of this is in addition to the generally dismissive attitude that is held towards setups that are not compatible with the TPT systems.
- Confusing and unnecessarily divided systems. I realize that TransPerfect is a large company, but there should be zero reason for one tech team to work in one ticketing system, while most others work in a different system.
- Subpar documentation on most things, but particularly on how the software works. A lot of features have comments such as "no one uses this" or "I don't know what this is for".
- A very tone-deaf CEO, forcing everyone back to the office and dismissing WFH as simply "writing one extra line of code or managing one extra project". Luckily, the subcompany I work for was not really affected by this and we were allowed to continue with our WFH agreements, but it left a very sour taste in my mouth.
