Great company that lost its way with a bad leadership choice - Recensione dipendente - Product Manager presso AgencyAnalytics

Not a current employee, so I'm not biased in any way... but this was hands down the best company I've ever worked for. I landed a position with them during a "lull" in my career, where freelance work had been slow and I just needed something full time. And it ended up being an amazing experience, where I grew my professional skills exponentially, and just thoroughly enjoyed my time working with them. Pros include: - Great pay - Great people - Liberal vacation time and sick days. Effectively unlimited as long as it wasn't abused. - A management team that truly has your back; even on the customer success team, if a customer is being unreasonable, management will back you up even if it means losing the customer - A fun company culture - Frequent raises and promotions - Fast-growing company that's constantly innovating - Opportunities for travel; trips to conferences, company retreats etc - Constant opportunities for professional growth; paid educational opportunities, time during work hours to learn new skills etc - Opportunities for everyone on the team (customer success, marketing, dev etc) to think entrepreneurially and to suggest projects and take the lead on things that they're passionate about - Unexpected perks. For example: My wife and I were having a baby, and the CEO bought half of the items on our baby registry and sent them to us. Another time, I mentioned to management that I was paying for a co-working membership. He gave me an ad-hoc raise on the spot to cover my membership fee. - Work life balance. A lot of companies pay lip service to this idea. These guys live it. While they take their business seriously and sometimes put in long hours for a specific project, the norm while I was there was to work only 9 to 5 rather than 8 to 5, and there were very minimal expectations for availability after hours. In addition, everyone was encouraged to take all of their vacation time and so on. - Direct access to the founders (the president and the CEO), who are down to earth guys and are always happy to provide mentorship and to make themselves available to bounce ideas off of. It's not considered at all out of the ordinary for a junior customer success rep or a junior developer to ping the CEO directly on Slack to share an idea or just to chat. - I could go on and on I saw one review that mentioned something about discrimination against Americans. I'm an American who worked for this Canadian company and I never noticed anything like that fwiw. I only left because I had another professional opportunity fall into my lap that effectively doubled my salary overnight, plus provided health insurance. With that being said, I'd go back in a heart beat if I they were able to somehow match my new salary and benefits!

Only cons that I can think of: - Employment for Americans FTEs was on a contract/1099 basis. I completely understand how difficult it would be for them to set up a business structure where they could hire Americans - living in the US - as FTEs (what we call W2 employees in the US). But that meant paying self-employment taxes on the income, which effectively almost doubled my tax rate, and ate into my take home pay. - No health insurance available. As a Canadian company, they have decent public health care, and this probably never even crossed their minds. But as an American, I was paying $600/month USD for health insurance while I was there. Again, that ate into my take home pay. Those were cons, but as a small Canadian company, they were probably unavoidable.

It’s bearable if you know how to work the system and make the founders feel smart. There’s still a loyal customer base that loves using the product. The VP has genuine respect for the team and no ego. He values our input and opinions, which is helping keep people around.

I’ve been here longer than most, and the low ratings are justified. It’s a rough environment for competent new hires who are treated as incompetent from the get-go, and that never changes. You have to learn not to care too much and to feign interest. It’s not easy if you’re not used to it, but that’s how you survive here. Straight up, the founders aren’t leaders or good decision-makers and everyone knows it. It’s sad, but that’s the reality. At the same time, no one can make a move without their permission, which makes everything incredibly frustrating. There’s no trust. You don’t come here to grow your career, to learn, or to make good money. It’s either a temporary stop, or you learn to smile, nod, and look bright-eyed at the founders’ latest scheme, even though you know it will fall flat in six months. There’s no wind in the sails anymore, no sense of optimism left. It’s just… bleh.