PixelSpoke Reviews

4.3

74% would recommend to a friend

(9 total reviews)

87% positive business outlook

Reviews by job title

9 reviews
1.0
11 Nov 2018

I knew I had to leave PixelSpoke

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The option to work from home is nice. The company follows a consistent website redesign process so it's fairly simple to learn how to do things the "PixelSpoke way" - rinse and repeat sort of set-up. Employees work hard and the company is fair to the clients they serve.

Cons

On paper, PixelSpoke is great. It's a marketing agency in the heart of downtown Portland with a purpose-driven CEO and a small team. So when I began to feel anxious and dread going into work, I didn't understand what was wrong. However, the latently abusive work environment began to become more and more obvious as time went on. With it being a small company, the individual personalities of the team end up driving the company culture. Inappropriate emails when deadlines/expectations are not met, uncomfortable stares when a meeting doesn't go according to plan, and a micro-managed work style are among the things I disliked the most about working at PixelSpoke. In addition, the work is often boring and repetitive. Creative projects are rare, and unless you are under budget, good luck enjoying the fun projects anyways! Every second of the day is clocked and those that spend the least time on billable work create the benchmarks for how much time should be spent on what. If you mention something is wrong, it will usually be turned around so that you feel like you're at fault for not "enjoying the journey." The truth is, once I picked up on the subtle ways in which PixelSpoke stifled creativity, allowed certain employees to pick on others, and emphasized process over people... I knew I had to leave.

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PixelSpoke Response
7y
Thank you for your heartfelt and honest feedback. I appreciate your perspective, and it makes me sad to hear that the environment felt abusive and negative to you. Creating a safe and supportive space is something that I and our team are actively working to do. Starting in summer of this year, we redefined our value of Authenticity to clearly state that “We are prepared to be vulnerable, open, and honest with each other as we create a gossip- and politics-free environment of high mutual trust.” We have been creating opportunities to live the Authenticity value through quarterly team dinners and monthly margarita Mondays where team members can socialize and build trust, a foundational building block of healthy conflict. We also implemented the Entrepreneurial Operating System, which gives team members a structured way to address issues we’re experiencing at the company in a safe, open, and honest space. Our issues list for our management team alone has fluctuated between 30 and 100 issues, and every team has an issues list where they are encouraged to report things that are not working. If a team member feels an interpersonal issue is too delicate to raise on the issues list, we have weekly check-ins and quarterly conversations between each team member and their supervisor to address them — though we encourage our team to work on issues with the people who are involved and provide coaching on how to do so as needed. We wholeheartedly agree that shutting down new ideas in meetings is unacceptable, and I have always been passionate about a culture where the best ideas win, not the biggest personalities. I and others have been pressing ourselves outside of our comfort zone as a way to model healthy conflict for the rest of the team, in hopes that our teammates will be comfortable to address their issues with us. There is, of course, always more to do, and we will keep working at it. I understand that it was not the correct venue for your creative pursuits — it is definitely a job where budgets, time tracking, and thorough process are critical to us being able to deliver high quality work to our clients. One of the most dangerous things about promoting a culture, job or business is creating the impression that it is “perfect” or “unique.” We are far from either of those, and our constant awareness of our imperfections is the only way to keep building something special. I hope that you have found a better fit in your new situation for your own happiness and fulfillment. Sincerely, Cameron CEO and co-founder
3.0
6 Oct 2018

The magic has been replaced by process

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Some of the best people I've ever met work or have worked here. It's a solid company where you can make a decent wage and not work crazy hours. You work with good clients, not big corporations or anything. Good benefits.

Cons

I wrote one of the earlier reviews when we were encouraged by management to write them. I was happy enough to write it then because it really did seem like a uniquely positive and supportive workplace, but things started going downhill in the last couple years and now it's just average or below. Team members started being held accountable for things they had no control over, teams were put in competition against each other, and the CEO reacted to his stress with extreme micromanagement. The turnover rate went from pretty much 0% to over 30% in just a couple years. There is no room for creativity in any role at PixelSpoke. It is a web development shop, not a creative agency. If you're not into every task of your day having a random process to follow, it's not for you. Just go into this one knowing it's not what it's presented as. It definitely won't be the worst place you work, but the hype about the culture and uniqueness of it is just hype.

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PixelSpoke Response
7y
Thank you for your open and honest feedback, and my apologies for a delayed response. I recognize that, as we have continued to grow as a company in the last few years our organizational structure, culture, and processes have been shifting. We’ve spent a lot of time since spring of this year working to clarify our org structure so that the right team members are accountable for the right tasks. This work has also led us to individual and cross-functional team meetings that are helping us to break down the silos that we had formed unintentionally. I hope you’re starting to see the fruit of those efforts as a current employee. You are correct that we are believers in the importance of process here, and I believe that it is our process that frees us to be creative in the areas that will make the most impact for our clients. It is our checklists, workflows, and attention to budgets that ensure we’re attending to the important details, so we and our clients can focus on making those areas of client delight really shine — be they the design of a particular web page, animations in an annual report, our client strategy decks, or something else. This also ensures the health of the company and our ability to continue to offer competitive wages and benefits. Particularly given our primary client base is credit unions, which are heavily regulated entities, attending to the details is important. I understand your perspective about the turnover in the last year. It has been a bit higher, and I have also seen over the years that people will naturally come and go in waves as they move onto the next chapter in their life. While we seek to keep team retention high by continuously focusing on our culture, the team’s work satisfaction, our compensation approach, and our benefits package, sometimes an employee making a professional change can be the healthiest for everyone. At the end of the day, life is too short to be in a job that does not fulfill you. This is why we work so hard at our Journeys of Transformation and other feedback efforts with our team. Anonymous feedback is a really difficult topic. I have read a fair bit about this topic trying to wrap my head around it. It can be a good way to gather feedback that otherwise is not encouraged, but it can also encourage a culture of gossip and backstabbing, and I believe that safety is a two-way street where everyone should have the right to face their accuser. We have worked hard to create a culture where people have training and support to have authentic and open conversations about the difficulties they face, and I also have seen this to be one of the most difficult skills to align teams around because we all have such diverse backgrounds and perspectives on conflict — it is not an easy journey, and I suspect it never will be. This provides additional motivation to keep working on this very important skill. If you’re open to it, I’d appreciate the chance to talk with you more about how we can continue to get better. Sincerely, Cameron CEO and co-founder
5.0
23 Jul 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

With both its clients and employees, PixelSpoke does business the way business should be done. The team here is not only incredibly smart and committed, but they are a caring group of people who don't gossip or backstab. This can in part be attributed to our highly selective and intentional hiring process and in part to our carefully cultivated culture, which holds each of us actively accountable to our six core values. Our values are not just posted somewhere in a break room; rather, we reference and live them every day. PixelSpoke understands that employees have lives outside of work and that work-life balance is not just a "nice to have" but absolutely essential to our happiness, morale, and productivity. We are constantly reevaluating processes to make them better and all feel that we have a stake in the future of the company. The CEO leads with authenticity and without ego, and he sets that tone for the rest of us. I'm 18 years into my career and this is by far the best place I've worked.

Cons

As a B Corp, we have an intentional social impact focus, but the nature of our daily work feels one step removed. Having previously worked in nonprofits, I miss feeling directly connected to a cause.

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