Blast Radius Reviews

Pros

- Some very interesting, talented, and creative people
- Casual and friendly atmosphere amongst employees
- Decent pay
- Beer cart Fridays
- Convenient location

Cons

- Poor communication from senior management
- Little to no recognition for jobs well done, but plenty of criticism over the smallest mistakes
- Heavy workloads that are unattainable in a "regular" 40-hour work week, so work-life balance is non-existent

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management really needs to start paying attention to the "little people" on the floor. We're the ones who are helping you make your revenue, so it'd be nice if we had more of an idea what was actually going on with this company. Also, you should really make a better attempt to hide your disorganization - for instance, telling us we're getting raises and following it up with an "oops, we made a mistake, no you aren't" is NOT a good way to keep employees.

Pros

some great people
great client roster
potential for interesting assignments

Cons

Senior leadership is absent at best incompetent at worst
Complete disregard for the contributions people make to the business
HR is a joke
The CEO has no respect for the people doing the work

Advice to Senior Management

Take your earn out money and find a nice beach to spend it on. You're killing the company. How many people need to resign before you fix the problems?

Pros

- Awesome people
- Awesome environment
- Everyone had a good sense of humor
- Goody Wednesday
- Beer Fridays
- Open Bar Xmas parties
- Good clients with potential to do GREAT work
- Decent pay, good benefits
- One month paid sabbatical after 3 years of service

Cons

- Reusing the same old strategy for every single project got old very fast
- Not embracing new technologies or ideas readily
- Most of the production team was kept in the dark till the very last minute
- So many useless meetings, which left little or no time to actually do the work
- Upper management did not know how to control the client, and didnt want to say No, because everything was very money focused.
- Career managers were generally useless, and had to be told what to do, rather than them guiding the employee.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees. Do not under estimate them, as they are more knowledgable in terms of creative and technology. Cut down on the meetings, you are eating the budget away, and not leaving alot of time for the production team to execute potentially awesome ideas, which become mediocre ideas. Sack people who cannot say NO to the client. They just waste the projects budget, by accepting work which is out of the scope and will not stand up for the team when sh*t hits the fan. Project managers need to be more powerful than the client director. Seems like the client director just talks on the phone, goes for lunches and long expensive boat trips. Try doing some probono work, its good for the companies image and encourages people to take on creative projects which in turn will only help the company.

Pros

- cutting edge technology/infrastructure
- flexible scheduling
- extremely casual and laidback environment
- 1 month paid sabbatical after 3 yrs of service, and every 3 years thereafter
- video games (when time actually permits)
- the occasional beer

Cons

- little room for career advancement
- North America vs. Europe vs. USA office rivalries
- Canadian benefits package is awful
- HR department is poorly staffed
- policies and procedures are in place, yet they're constantly overlooked

Advice to Senior Management

Executive management is scatter-brained and treats staff like slaves. Management should consider replacing people at the top of the pyramid. (EVP of HR should be the first on the list)

Pros

Laid back atmosphere at Blast

Cons

Crazy, no project leadership at Blast

Advice to Senior Management

Learn from your mistakes, learn from the departures.

Pros

Great Location, Great Clients, and Good talent

Cons

Senior management is disconnected from reality and focused on personal gains
Lack of fair compensation
Lack of fair performance review and career development

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your people once in a while

Pros

Great clients, colleagues, few beer fridays, goody wednesdays, sabbatical

Cons

Hopeless senior management, unclear career paths, why do some ordinary guys get promoted while some hard working guys dont?

Advice to Senior Management

Take care of good employees otherwise they will all be gone soon

Pros

hhmmmm, moving swiftly on..

Ok, the Tech department is great and there are a few isolated pockets of excellence in other departments, but in general this place is a disaster.

Cons

Senior Management:
- Totally disconnected with their staff
- Out of touch with real issues on the workfloor
- Solely financially driven
- The more overtime, the better the employee
- Driving away the best brains
- Trying to apply North American model to Europe and not recognizing that this is simply not possible
- HR is a joke

Ops:
- Project Management skills are simply pathetic
- No workflow,. no process
- No resource planning
- Mediocre creative

Advice to Senior Management

Take your Earn-Out dollars and leave the field to the next generation of managers before you run your business into the ground. BR will self-implode soon unless senior management wakes up very quickly.

Pros

Great Colleagues!
Great Clients!
Ok benefits & salaries

Cons

North America needs to understand that Europe is not Canada
Work ethics are different
The CEO, EVP HR & Ops & EVP Corp Affairs are control freaks and need to take their money and run - as they are killing what could be a great place to work.
If you enjoy being bullied and treated like a halfwitt - then BR is for you.

Advice to Senior Management

Advice to WPP/Wunderman - get rid of the CEO/EVP HR & EVP Corp Affairs - bunch of cowboys who are killing the brand and the employees

Pros

interesting project work
great colleagues
had some good clients

Cons

worst ever CEO!!!!!!
There are so many cons when you have a CEO who does not respect the people who work for him...
There were a lot of people who could have made the company great, but as soon as they get a better job they move on.

Advice to Senior Management

Start empowering employees!