Great Company and great environment - Project Manager Circular Energy Employee Review

I worked at Circular Energy full time. It was a fast growing company with smart and hard working people. Culture and brand were emphasized regularly, and people on my team were given the autonomy to make things happen. Communication was good and energy level was high. Customers almost always gave positive feedback and my boss and others did a good job of sharing this. My boss was helpful and interested in my success.

Too much control was given to some bad apples. One of the early employees was promoted over his head and undermined CEO and others continually. Some other bad hiring decisions took too long to fix. Plans around software business were confusing and took some people away from their full-time job. Acquisition led to a new management team with lots of utility experience but no care for the customer or reputation. Priorities changed to commercial overnight and many customers were left hanging. Some leaders including CEO seemed frustrated and most quit soon after.

There were some really, phenomenal people at Circular. That is really the only thing I miss. That was the only thing that kept it bearable - nobody wanted to let anybody down. -That is, the people who made things really happen.

Circular suffered from schizophrenic management from the start. While they hired a really talented attorney to help get the company running on a defined track, there was really no stopping the derailment after years of previous "management". The company was continually suffering with the fact that the founder hired virtually everybody in as a "Director of ....", which meant that everybody thought they were somebody's boss and there was a perpetual struggle to "stay off the bottom". Personally, I think this hiring practices stemmed from the fact that by hiring salaried managers he didn't have to pay overtime. All of us routinely worked 70+ hour weeks and often on weekends. So essentially, you had a bunch of "directors" running rock saws, building electrical systems and doing maintenance work. And, everybody was put in competition by the founder to take over some division or start some new program. Finally, I feel the "opportunities" presented to us by being part of what we took as a successful start-up were disingenuous. I think they were just tools to get us to work as hard as we would let them.