Blast Radius Reviews in Vancouver, BC Area

Pros

Blast Radius has high standards for choosing it's employees, they are looking for more than your technical skills. They are concerned with your communication skills and your personality, because people with the right attitude can work together and produce outstanding results.

This is clearly the case with blast radius. All the employees are excellent to work with. The management does not force a hierarchical system on the employees, which make for a very productive casual environment where everybody's ideas can be heard and innovation can take place.

Cons

The downside of working for blast radius are the bad clients.
Clients that change their minds, and cannot keep up with the pace of work at blast really hinder the smooth running of projects at blast radius.

Advice to Senior Management

Maintain the casual and non hierarchical environment, that makes it a pleasure to work at blast radius. If the employees lose their freedom to speak back and be heard, blast radius would lose it's edge.

Pros

Flexible work environment, interesting and intelligent coworkers, sometimes interesting projects. Some good process, but project-dependent.

Cons

Getting pulled in different directions when being resourced to multiple projects; sometimes a lot of extra hours necessary to get things done; estimates are never revisited; sometimes terrible scope-creep; low level of software "engineering", most work is short-term gain (which often mimics short-term projects). No increases in compensation for quite some time. Not a good place to further your career except perhaps as a junior/intern, but you may learn a lot of bad habits.

Many projects are touted and bragged about (eg. in company meetings) but then fall into obscurity. Only much later do you hear that they bombed.

Lots of young employees; not a lot of support or connection for those with families.

Advice to Senior Management

Form dedicated teams, get a handle on resourcing, actually pay people for extra hours. Continue to push back on ridiculous clients. Don't let your employees be taken advantage of. Where is the career path?

Pros

The company employes some very talented people, making it a creatively inspirational environment in which to work. HR has created a good social environment with many fun social activities occuring on a regular basis.

Cons

The vision of the company continues to change and is written in flowery and ineffective words. The CEO often speaks of wanting to create something innovative like Apple, but never seems ot achieve this; lots ot talk, little action.

Advice to Senior Management

The management team, including the CEO needs to focus more on the KISS principle, and using a more pragmatic language when describing the value chain of the company.

Pros

The projects you get to work on are very interesting and sometimes are leading edge. Many of the staff are very, very talented, they are among the most talented people I've ever worked with.

Cons

There is no respect for employees and their life - people are overworked and there is no effort to keep in mind that people have a life outside of work. 60 hour weeks are common. Management provides no support in terms of pushing back on unreasonable clients and in recognizing employee issues. The workplace is completely chaotic with the worse leadership I've ever worked with.

Advice to Senior Management

Get a backbone.

Pros

The people are awesome. Not just in a smart kind of way, but also in a fun-to-hang-out-with and glad-to-know-you sort of way.

Cons

Poor transparency between business development department and delivery departments. Lack of foresight when attempting to secure projects and potential clients.

Advice to Senior Management

Value your people more. Get their input on pitches. Stop underselling our services.