Good Company & People - Sr SEO Media Strategist GRAYBOX Employee Review

4.0
4 Feb 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

GRAYBOX is full of friendly and down to earth people. For many, the cons I listed probably aren't a big deal, and I'd still recommend working for them as you don't have to talk to Paul too often, the managers are fair, the work is good, and people can be pretty helpful.

Cons

The CEO is arrogant but has moments of decency. Even the recruiter who hired me told me that people often said he seemed like a jerk, and that she thought that too for a while but that he's a decent guy. He thinks he knows more than he does, just slows things down, and has a "do as I say" attitude. He once said, "Don't think of me as owner Paul, think of me as marketer Paul and talk to me like a coworker." Instant red flags, but I gave it a shot...turns out he didn't mean it. He wanted a yes-man. The company overall is incredibly inefficient and charges clients (partners) for planning which is just ridiculous. Just do the upfront work to plan it out well enough that you don't have to eat away at budget planning. They also eat away at clients' budgets by saying, "include logging your time, emails, slack conversations, and anything else in your estimates of how long it'll take to do the work." This heavily widdles down budget on unproductive work. Not to mention it's hard to track. A couple of folks could learn to stop talking on meetings, backing the company and me into corners and even forcing me to contradict them mid call because they stuck their foot in their mouth so bad I couldn't gracefully correct the misinformation or erroneous expectation they set. Not paying me 51 hours of PTO was in pretty poor taste too, but they're allowed to legally do that. It's not that it was illegal, it just isn't very human-centric.

Explore other reviews about GRAYBOX

5.0
3 Jun 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Flexible Schedule at Graybox was a plus

Cons

I dont have any cons

3.0
27 Apr 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Mostly cool people on the team, interesting projects and clients

Cons

Base salaries are low and supplemented with performance-based bonuses that are based on billable hours. Logged billable hours can be lowered by Account Managers if they feel like you spent too much time on a task, and there's very little transparency into how you're tracking towards billable hours goals, and what hours actually count towards that number. Tasks that had clear scoped hours were always scoped really tightly, with no additional time factored in for communication, internal/client review or revisions. Billable hours goals were not adjusted for PTO or paid holidays, which de-incentivized using PTO and made people feel like they had to "make up" any time off, including holidays, in order to meet billable hours targets to qualify for bonuses. Accrued vacation time was decent but employees are only granted 2 sick days annually, so vacation time must be used for additional sick days. When I started, I was told that the low salaries with performance-based bonuses and the minimal sick time were temporary measures to ensure that the company became profitable again after a rough previous year. A few months later, I was told that the CEO had changed his mind and that this was how things would be for the foreseeable future. Insurance benefits are decent but the company only covers a small percentage of that cost for employees. The system they use for insurance enrollment is dated and tedious; they accidentally enrolled me in the wrong parent company's insurance plan and had to move me and my dependents to the right plan, which took about a week and ended up being really inconvenient, as my child had a scheduled checkup that week.

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