Be Careful Not to Be Too Blinded by the Hi-Tech Lights - it's Smoke & Mirrors
Pros
- I am actually a fan of the open space work environment. Helped to foster creativity and brainstorming within teams. - Most of the time there is decent food in the office (until the CEO decides to ban certain items...) - I left the company with some of my fellow employees becoming really good friends. - Decent happy hours (though it is getting quite crowded)
Cons
- Employees who bear the brunt of the blame for problems that are not their fault. Numerous times, employees have been blamed for entire websites failing. And even though employees can prove it is not their fault, it doesn't matter...damage has been done. - If you are a woman and you are looking to add to your family, please be advised that there have been quite a few women who came back to less-than-pleasant experiences at Webpals. The CEO may be a woman, but it doesn't mean that women are treated fairly when they come back from maternity leave. - There is a lot of favoritism. Many have been at the wrong end of being a person's favorite, and it has come at the expense of our ability to do our job properly as well as diminish the likelihood for any upward mobility within the company. - Too much much managerial red tape - they keep creating more and more managerial positions, which you would think is good, but they are middle middle management, creating more layers to get through. Yes, you might be a team leader, but there is another manager above you who has another manager above them, and so on and so forth. Oh, and they were probably hired from outside. - Alluded in the previous statement - there is no room for growth and advancement. When I first came to Webpals, this was one of the things I appreciated most in the company. However, in the last few months I was there, there have been a number of open positions that could have clearly been filled internally by people who were more than capable of doing it, yet they'd rather bring in new people. Some people may believe that a fresh set of eyes is always good, but when you have been working there for 2+ years and you do good work and want to move up in ranks, not getting a higher position is a kick to the stomach. Their reasoning is that enough people have been promoted, but that really is not true nor is it justification. If you have people who are good, solid workers, and like the place, it would be beneficial to the company to keep them and not have them look elsewhere. And yes, recently there was some inner promotion - but when you find out how long ads for those positions were open before they decided to promote from within, it looks more like they had no other choice (they couldn't find people to fill those positions), rather than because of the merits of those people. - And the people they do hire from outside aren't always the best at their position. They may be "a good person," but they don't know how to do their job. - Promises are made but never kept. 'Nuff said there.
