Too many cooks in the kitchen - Anonymous employee Influitive Employee Review

3.0
Dec 9, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Competitive salary and benefits. Free lunches and beer on Fridays. Awesome social events. Incredibly passionate and talented coworkers. Strong emphasis on work/life balance.

Cons

Decisions are made by a bloated executive team that is focused solely on making quarterly sales targets. All decisions are top-down and are made 2 to 3 quarters in advance (despite the attempt at agile development) which leaves no room for iteration. The CEO seems genuinely angry around the office and barely talks to most employees. Often not answering when greeted with a simple 'hello'. There is a huge divide between the product/dev team and the sales/marketing team. There seems to be almost no communication between the two. Neither team knows what the other is working on. Product and development are often blindsided and forced to build features that don't exist because they have already been sold to customers. Influitive was once a really fun place to work, where creativity and innovation was valued. Unfortunately, the top-down approach and communication breakdown is ruining the culture.

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Influitive Response
10y
Thanks for taking time to write this review. I'm disappointed to learn that you feel there are too many cooks in the kitchen. We do think about the size of the executive team, and I wouldn't call it "bloated": of 140 employees, 11 are VP-level or higher. Feels about right. You're absolutely correct -- there is back and forth between Sales and Engineering about what to build, what we can sell, etc. This is the classic tension in most enterprises. I can assure you that even if we don't always get it just right, there is a lot of dialogue between these teams. Tough compromises sometimes must be made to serve our customers (existing and prospective), but that dialogue is happening nonetheless. Clearly we're not doing a good enough job of communicating with people on the teams about that, and we'll strive to improve that. I hope (and respectfully request) that you take up this cause and work to make things better in this regard. If you have ideas on how to improve this, so that we continue to enhance our product to drive value for customers, we will listen. As an owner in the company it's clearly in your interests to do so.

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Cons

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5.0
Mar 31, 2015
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Pros

The team is amazing, at the exec level and all the way to individual contributors. People are engaged with their teams and there's a "flatness" feel to the company that I haven't experienced before in other start-ups or enterprises. You experience true collaboration, and we don't see the all too common finger-pointing among departments. Open, honest communication is more than a core value, it's the way this place is run. That starts with daily, 9-minute, all-hands, video conference meetings to sync up on the business. That's critical for employees in remote locations who need to stay plugged in with everything that's going on. With the rapid growth of the business, many internal advancement opportunities have been created for employees, including across departments. This is an outgrowth of the company emphasis on investing in individual success as well as team success.

Cons

Can't say I love visiting Toronto HQ in February, but not much you can do about Canadian weather! Not a con for many of us, but know that the pace is fast, the goals are high, and the demands on employees to perform are significant. This is not a place to hang out and go along for the ride. Everyone is held accountable to make meaningful contributions.

3
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