Active Network Reviews

"United We Fear" should be the corporate motto. It starts from the top with the CEO. He instills fear in his executive team which trickles its way down to directors and team managers. The entire company is scared of the repercussions associated with not being able to meet a deadline or sales quotas. The executives fail to let the directors and managers lead their teams, but instead use them as puppets to manage the teams themselves. The managers/directors are ALL extremely submissive to the executives. I've yet to see an ounce of resistance to their ideas. You're expected to work long hours without remote work as a viable option (unless it's the weekend, which isn't unusual). Many employees are working 60-70 hours a week without bonuses or compensation. I've never seen employee morale so LOW at a company. It isn't unusual for an executive to bypass his directors and managers and directly work side by side with a regular employee on a pressing project. The stress levels are through the roof on a variety of teams: graphic designers, software developers, account managers, brand managers and ALL sales teams. In fact, the CEO has large monitors displayed throughout the office (including his own office) that show the top 10 and bottom 10 sales performers. Again, using fear/humiliation as a way to motivate employees. A popular story that is told throughout the office is the time a sales employee sent a friend request to the CEO on LinkedIn during work hours. The CEO came down to the floor with the full intent on firing that employee on the spot. Not only is that a ridiculous thing to do at a tech company, but that employee was taking PTO on that particular day. Embarrassing. The company is very open with the strategy of selling the company in a couple of years. That would make most employees question long term job stability. However, everybody that I know at the company has no plans on staying for longer than 2 years max. Most are leaving at the 1 year mark. The micromanagement is insane. This isn't an issue for one particular team, but instead it has become the norm for managers/directors on all teams to be WAY too controlling of their employees. Executives will circle the office like hawks to make sure employees are at their desks and working diligently. They will hold the directors/managers accountable if there are any slip-ups. In return, the directors/managers will micromanage in order to avoid repercussions from their superiors. The way teams are organized at Active makes ZERO sense. It is VERY common to have a team working on a dedicated brand, but each team member reports to a different boss. This creates a lot of issues, because there ends up being 10 bosses involved in a project that should only involve one or two superiors. Executives will not hesitate to belittle directors in front of their team members. I see it happen all the time. The compensation doesn't meet the industry standard for technology related roles. The restroom facilities only have two stalls per floor. There's around 250 employees per floor. I'll let your imagination handle that one. There is no defined culture at this company. The personality types within specific teams are all over the place. This mostly has to do with the fact that Active is willingly looking for the cheapest employee that they can find to fill the role. Talent is never the first thing on their mind.

Where to begin: -Company went public, and within a year, was being looked at as structurally Insolvent. All the directors and C-levels sold their stock off and only kept a fraction of a % of ownership in the company they ran. So right there, no confidence in itself. -It was purchased by a private equity firm who proceeded to gut the company. Office closures and mass layoffs ensued. Massive talent loss as a result. As of this review, That equity firm still is holding onto the company. Several smaller units within have been sold off. But I believe it is saying something that Active has yet to be sold after this many years. -After the Purchase, departments were consolidated into one central office in Dallas, TX. Those who would not move were let go. Forcing under qualified individuals into positions they had no business being in. Not their fault, but a sign of things to come. Senior managers in all departments were and are leaving this Dallas location after only a year or two, and returning to life where they were before the move. Whether it is living in Dallas, or working downtown, or the atmosphere in the office itself I cannot say. But it is happening. -Employees were told the focus would be on becoming a "Data Company". That "We have all this data and we can leverage this data". Nothing every really came of this proclamation, and Active purchased a stop watch/timing company soon after, getting into the hardware business...as a data company. -CIO who would rather stick it someone personally, even if the effect on the company is negative. Moving functional and competent client teams out of areas to Dallas and people with no understanding of the Active business/infrastructure, then scream and complain when they were failing. -Intentionally tricking customers into enrolling into a membership program online by doing anything from registering for a race, or reserving a campground. A lawsuit was settled with the state of Vermont regarding this. Active paid the state over $160k. You can look it up if you like. When I left, it sounded like the state od California was possibly looking into this as well. -The company is hemorrhaging talent. Managers and skilled employees are overworked, then leaving. And they typically don't backfill, leaving more work for those beleaguered employees left behind. Teams are divided and split and reassigned, with no real thought. And the work suffers as a result. -HUGE revenue streams in the outdoors division are leaving. Two of the biggest clients in the outdoors reservation industry have decided that the product Active puts forth, and the support they receive, are subpar, and with recent RPO's, have given other companies their business. You can look this up and confirm online. In the next year, a lot of money will no longer being coming in, and there will undoubtedly be even more layoffs. -Flagship website (Active.com) is constantly broken and users from all over the country are affected. -Heavy reliance on workers in IT/Dev/telecommunications based out of China. -Little to no training. -No career path. You are hired for a role and there you shall stay until attrition forces other roles upon you. But you will not be compensated for that extra responsibility. -Pointless review/self review process. You will told to assign yourself some goals fo further your career path. then they will never be mentioned again until the next review. where you explain that you did not meet those goals, and your manager has never once followed up on them with you. -Paltry 1%-3% merit increases each year, despite the quality and volume of work you produce. -Claim to not have budget to accommodate new staff/tech. Then send over 60 Employees (and a guest) from the Dallas Office on a week long all expense paid trip to Costa Rica. And tout that to all the employees who were/are not eligible. -Company will not pay market value. And has stated that those market value numbers are a lie. -Has not really developed any new product in over 10 years, merely moves old product to an existing platform, or acquires another company and shows that off. But claims to be innovative. Active is in the game of hanging on, not innovating. -Claims that management working remotely is not something they support. Unless you are close to the C-Level team that is. Overly qualified managers who actually want to stay with the company, are told they cannot work remotely, by people working remotely. So they leave. -Equity firm has no idea about how to effectively manage a call center environment. One merely has to Google "Active Network" and see what is out there.