This part is going to be long but if you don't have time to read it all, just know the worst things about CompassX has to do with its leadership with the main themes being lack of actual leadership, competence, empathy and transparency. In my many years of experience spanning multiple industries and company sizes, this is by far the worst run place with the most atrocious leadership and management I have seen.
If you agree to join, be prepared to spend hours preparing for a client interview with leadership which will be a complete waste of time because they will likely know nothing about the project, client, industry, role and stakeholders. This preparation will happen after hours on top of your current day job and will likely make you worse off at the client interview than if you never prepared in the first place.
Here's one of the worst thing the company does: overspend and overfocus on hiring. The only metric the company uses to measure success is the number of employees. Also, there is a huge amount of undisclosed turnover. So they will tell employees that the company is growing but in fact, people leave all the time and they’ll never let you know and will deny it outright until they’re backed into a corner. As a result, they always promise their clients they have the bench to take on new projects but actually hire new people instead. Also, all new hires are placed on a "virtual team" and don’t start at CompassX until a project opens up for them. So if you work at CompassX, just know that your replacement is already hired. If you roll off your current project, you’ll be laid off because there won’t be any vacant projects for you to pivot to thanks to the over hiring and virtual team. So when you’re hired, the unspoken expectation is that outside of your first project, you’re going to have to find your own work because every other project that opens up after will be promised to someone else. Leadership will not support you or your efforts because they will be focused on hiring as many people as they can to inflate the company's growth.
They like to tell you that because the company is small, you’re not just a number like you are at the big places. In fact, at CompassX, you’re more of a number than you would be anywhere else. On top of all this, even though you’re expected to find your own work, guess who gets the largest cut of your billing? That’s right.
Leadership is lazy and just there to collect a paycheck. They don’t bill any meaningful number of hours and so they just spend their time creating tedious required work for everyone else. What’s even more insulting is that they will pretend to be too busy for you when half the time they’re at Disneyland or day drinking. Expect to be ignored when you need them but also expect them to force you to talk to them after hours or on weekends about nonsense all for the sake of looking like they actually do something. They love to create unnecessary internal administrative work to give the illusion that they are doing something with their time and that CompassX is a respectable firm that needs overengineered processes. In reality, they're just twiddling their thumbs until they actually need to show up to work.
One of the best examples of incompetence is the non-stop push for happy hours and social events. Even in the middle of 2020 when the pandemic was raging, these guys were pressuring employees to come out and drink. The worst part of this is that they will send out employee engagement surveys where most employees will raise legitimate operational improvements they want to see but in the summary leadership sends out, they will say the thing most people asked for was happy hours and social events. They will follow up with this saying they will work harder to schedule more events and ignore any real feedback that's provided. It’s completely fabricated and senseless.
Keep in mind that the target person this company hires is someone that's either in their 40s, close to it or older. People at this age don't tend to work the same amount of hours they did when they were in their 20s. Well, leadership sets unrealistic targets for hours that are impossible to hit if you want to take vacation or work less than 60 hours a week. If you maximize the vacation and sabbatical time they brag about giving you, you'll have to work like you're at McKinsey or even Goldman Sachs to hit the targets they set for you. Otherwise, you can kiss any additional compensation goodbye. Funnily enough, I've heard the founder say that CompassX is a much better company and place to work at than those places I named. Absolutely insanity. Not only that, leadership has the nerve to schedule 3 PM happy hours (yes, back to happy hours) and quarterly town halls that go for 4-6 hours. These are required if you want to be "successful" at this company. So they insult you by setting unrealistic targets and they also force you to go to their time-intensive cult gatherings to distract you from hitting those targets, all while bragging about how family is one of their core pillars and that everyone at the company has great work/life balance. And if you're a normal human being and not one of the many mindless zombies that work at the company, these events make you question your existence the entire time you're there.
Oh and don't worry. They do a monthly contest of who works the most hours in a month. The winner gets a $100 Amazon gift card. That'll make up for your kids hating you for missing soccer games and spelling bees. That'll make up for your spouse wanting a divorce. So while leadership might get an extra $35,000 from your extra hours, you'll be sitting pretty with a $100 gift card to buy new glasses or a seat cushion just to make your work a little less unbearable.
When clients switched to working from home at the beginning of the pandemic, leadership pressured us to continue going to the office for the sake of optics even though nobody was going to be there. Once it was clear we couldn’t do that because clients actually cared if people got sick and spread it, leadership changed the messaging to say the work from home mandate would only last one month and that we should be expected to go back to the office even in the middle of a pandemic. Leadership would actually call clients and volunteer for consultants to go back to the office all while they have always “work” comfortably from home.
Also, the positive reviews are fake. The founder writes them and leadership has incentivized employees to write positive reviews too. As mentioned in another review, every positive review is bulleted. If that's not suspicious enough, take a look at those cons in those reviews too. They're not even legitimate cons and each of them is a false positive with a "but" statement that says something like the company is still growing or leadership is trying hard to address. I'm sorry but it's laughable to have cons such as: having to drive your own career, working in a startup environment, working with a small client base, working in smaller teams and all that nonsense.
The founder can't even force himself to think of real faults. Additionally, he takes the time to praise himself/leadership in these reviews. Also, take a look at the awful and inhuman responses to the actual real negative reviews and ask yourself if you really want to work for someone like that. All of this is embarrassing and anyone with a semblance of intelligence and critical thinking skills can tell these reviews are fake. It's insulting he thinks the public would buy these low-effort fake reviews.
If you're not convinced to stay away after reading all this and still end up joining, you will inevitably quit or get laid off. If you're lucky enough to quit on your own terms and put in your notice, you will be completely ignored. They'll reach out to someone on the virtual team to fill your spot before they even finish reading your notice. There is absolute no professionalism. You'll be treated like a number on a checklist the entire time you're there but the moment you quit, leadership takes it like a personal attack and will be truly confused why you want to leave because they believe it's truly a good place to work.
If you value your career, time, sanity, family, friends and life, stay away from this company.
