GLG is a toxic workplace, with terrible management and an upside-down business model. For any ambitious, driven, intelligent, hardworking and independent people, this company will be your kryptonite. A few points that I observed/dealt with during my 3+ year tenure with the company.
Not a Performance Based Culture: No matter what management pretends to tell you, performance and talent are in no way linked to who gets promoted, who gets the biggest bonuses, etc. Promotions are given to tenured employees who are low/average performers who do not get burned out. The top performing employees and driven professionals quickly burn out, leave for new jobs within 1-2 years, or leave for grad school. The ones who stick around are the average performers who “drink the kool-aid”. Despite being a high performer, I was legitimately told by several people at the TL, VP and SVP level to “drink the kool-aid” if I wanted to progress and get promoted. They want people who follow orders rather than ask questions. Quickly touching on compensation, bonuses were cut smaller and smaller every year I was at GLG. Senior managers gobbled up the financial gains while over-working the revenue generating associates. It’s no wonder employee turnover exceeds 30%+.
Terrible Management and Business Model: Nearly all of the revenue generated at GLG is by the new associates (0-2 years tenure). Once you get to the Team Leader level, you stop taking any client work and start “managing” a team of people. Managing has become a 1984esque structure where e-mail time stamps are tracked (i.e., being scolded for not responding to a Sunday client e-mail over a holiday weekend, etc), managers can send pop-ups to your screen to make you complete tasks immediately, and every possible metric that can be tracked on employees is viewed by 2-3 levels of managers above you. Meanwhile, TLs and above have no client responsibilities so they do not have to work late into evenings, on weekends, and operate under 30+ metrics every time they open their computers. Changes are terribly communicated to new hires, and almost always increase micromanagement and automation (i.e templates to e-mail clients rather than human responses, checking boxes when setting up projects rather than creative brainstorming)
Council Member Management: One of the most disheartening things to see during my time at the company was how it treats its 'Council Members', or the primary product, the network of expert consultants. New employees are required to bring in dozens of high caliber, successful business experts to our network. Once brought in, GLG treats the experts like absolute garbage. For example, a switch to only paying them in gift cards rather than cash. Inaccurate 'rate setting' polices to undercut their hourly rate, systems that encourage/force employees to call/email professionals 10-15 times a day about 'urgent' client work, and rolling out tech buttons to deceive them to consult free of charge, lower rate and any other cost cutting mechanism you can image. At the rate this is going, I doubt GLG will be able to keep/retain experts based on how poorly they are treated and how much of a hassle it becomes.
HR Policies: Unlimited vacation policy is a scam, new associates are inadvertently told not to take any time off in order to hit impossibly high targets, while senior managers are known to take month+ long vacations. The company boasts “an average of 15 days off per employee”, do the math.
