I’ll begin with the biggest issue – Ryan Anderson, CEO and very public face of Filevine, is all over the map. In one meeting, he’s bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm and encouragement like Billy Mays in an Oxiclean ad, and in another meeting two hours later, he’s verbally berating a lesser employee in front of 20 peers for something that wasn’t even their fault. That person quit shortly thereafter, I should add.
Ryan concerns himself with some of the strangest and most disruptive minutiae, hovering like a helicopter parent, making massive, company-affecting decisions in an instant that leaves all departments reeling and scrambling to try and keep up with his current mood. He’ll make promises to clients to ‘close deals’ without ever consulting with the teams that have to develop these solutions and with no respect to current workload and team bandwidth. It’s soul-crushing, and there are firms that, due to his overpromises, still have not implemented the software after two years.
A perfect example of incredibly poor decision-making can be found in Ryan's appointment for another high-ranking position (neither the name or the title of whom will Glassdoor's policies allow me to include here, but I can say that there was some nepotism involved). This individual supposedly came from big players in the financial world, but I find that highly suspect, as most of their decisions are not focused on ‘the bottom line’. All too often, this person fixates on minor metrics when real, six-figure accounts are at stake, and this company has lost extremely talented people due solely to their poor leadership. Simply put, those people left because this particular person created a work environment where they could not thrive.
To make matters worse, this person also suffers from crippling back-and-forth on their decision-making, and in general, they can't be trusted. They create enemies lists and pursue them. Like Ryan, this person does not do well with objective business decisions and often upends whole apple carts in order to get the one that rolled underneath. They're in over their head, throwing strategies and policies against the wall, and daily hoping that one will finely pull post-sales out of the quagmire it has become.
To be clear, the work environment is stifling and discouraging when you look more than a single layer beneath the surface, and the people who should know better - the adults - either don't know (my guess) or don't care.
Below is a shortlist of actions I’ve seen this company take:
-Purposely shake things up in terms of policy and expectations to chase out higher earners in order to bring in younger, lower earners.
-Write up PIPS with impossible-to-fulfill requirements in order to justify letting someone go who is an otherwise standout employee. I even saw one instance where a person met their requirements and was fired anyway.
-Play favorites to the point that two employees can offer dissenting opinions, but one will be written up or fired while the other will be promoted for ‘being strong and outspoken’.
-Favor diversity quotas over excellent hires, bringing in new directors that are clearly underqualified. As a result, these new directors are fired soon thereafter and the process of constant upheaval begins again.
-Impugn whole teams as ‘children’ who ‘they don’t want to have to babysit’ at the annual conference (for no discernable reason).
-Fire or otherwise chase away founding members of this fledgling company with no sense of loyalty.
-Tell the entire company that, even though we increased our profit margin by hundreds of %%% last year, no one is getting raises because we’re a ‘scrappy company’ and we don’t ‘do it like those other guys.’
-(in the very same meeting where we discussed how much more money we’ve made) Neglect to announce a Christmas bonus of any kind. Mind you, no one is entitled to a bonus, but the messaging was right on par with everything else. ‘Thanks for all your hard work, you really made us rich, now go away’.
And none of these touch on the working conditions of the office (poor, noisy, cramped, people sitting on the floor because we don’t. Have. Enough. Chairs (before COVID, anyway)). A new office is coming, but it’s going to be 50 miles from the previous office, and commuting will (so far) be mandatory. That means that anyone who bought a house close to the office in Provo will now be required to commute to SLC, 50 miles one way (except, perhaps the sales team).
These cons also don’t discuss the insultingly low salaries offered. Let’s just say that you shouldn’t expect a competitive offer or a one-year raise that brings you up to industry standards.
And one other thing to note – this company, rather than taking criticism and making improvements from these negative Glassdoor reviews (of which there are quite a few), becomes very angry, even initiating behind-the-scenes witch hunts for the authors. If you go back through these Glassdoor reviews, you’ll often see alternating positive and negative entries – this is due to management frequently posting counter reviews to offset these honest, negative ones or asking a newer employee to do so.
