10y
It's always disheartening to see a negative review from a short term employee whose sentiments are out of sync with those of our long term employees and our customers. Ultimately, I guess it does come down to perspective differences when you consider the cons listed here.
The bonus referred to was a performance bonus that was always contingent upon the performance of the team as a whole. Given that the bonus paid out in the first 4 months after it was instituted (the only months in which this employee could have been active), I'm not totally sure that I understand why that would be considered "rarely". Regardless, that bonus was ultimately scrapped in favor of across the boards employee raises after this employee left as we're absolutely willing to pay a premium for true professionalism and most of those employees that have that kind of professionalism do not need to be motivated by a bonus designed to promote it - especially when they are paid well for that professionalism in the first place.
It's true that we do not have a conventional benefits package. That is usually the case with startups. We don't hide the fact that we're a startup or anything that means. But that less than traditional benefits package is also exactly why we have always added 10+% to the salary of every employee who signs on with us on top of the traditional paid vacation, paid sick leave, regular reviews, and casual work environment.
Putting money first and client second is never something we have done. The multiple 5-star client reviews we have across our various profiles don't really jive with the line of thought expressed in this former employee's review. We routinely turn down business from clients that are not a fit as money is far less important than a good relationship. We do focus on maintaining profitability for the sake of making sure that our employees are well paid and that the company remains financially stable. But speaking as the owner, I have personally put off raises and even a reasonable salary in favor of providing my employees with raises and tools instead (repeatedly) - even at times when it meant finding creative ways to finance those raises and tools. That has often meant that I've personally had to make both time and monetary sacrifices above and beyond what I have ever asked of my employees in order to finance their raises - something I've happily done and continue to do.
In the tech industry, it's nearly impossible to work exclusively inside of one country so we do have both numerous customers and partners throughout the world. But at no point have we ever told our non HR employees what we're paying other employees or partners. Perhaps this employee was attempting an educated guess.
We are and always have been a growth and training culture. One that includes personal training from highly skilled employees on our team and a HUGE library of training resources that we provide to our team to train themselves on top of the more cutting edge equipment we supply. It's always been our practice to train up employees. One of those employees actually came in with no qualifications for the job at all, picked up almost 30% in raises in less than 2 years and ultimately left for a better opportunity at a national firm. That's been pretty common for those that came through our company at this time. They came in well under qualified for a job in the web technology industry and were qualified enough when they left to land prestigious tech jobs in other companies in the area. I believe this former employee actually did something similar to that. So I guess I'm not entirely sure how that was a negative for this employee either.
While I absolutely appreciate the raw honesty that this reviewer believes he was providing, the the evidence doesn't really jive with his sentiments. All feedback is ultimately good feedback, though. So I appreciate that he took the time to provide it.
