Blast Radius Reviews in Vancouver, BC Area

Pros

Flexible hours.
Great people.
Big clients.
Fun work atmosphere.

Cons

Crazy deadlines.
A culture where overtime is expected.
Poor compensation for overtime.
Very poor communication from senior management.

Advice to Senior Management

Talent and dedication are prolific at Blast Radius, yet there is seems to be on-going and ever-present problems. Communication from senior management it very poor and the employees are often left with a feeling of distrust towards management. I do not feel the CEO understands the nature of the business nor cares at all about his employees.

Pros

Free junk food on wednesdays
Vacation benefits are greater than most employers
Casual work environment
People were generally fun and nice

Cons

Upper Management often has no idea what really goes on in the office.
Directors and Managers have poor communication skills and don't give feedback properly, if at all.
Office morale is extremely low due to poor communication from mid-upper management about anything (literally).
No recognition for a job well done and feedback from managers on work was often only given when negative.
Support from managers is minimal, if existent at all.
Management does not listen to employees at all.
Social committee severely lacking.
Reception/IT staff weren't attentive with the exception of a few people
The CEO's glass door rating speaks for itself, but not a great leader and extremely demanding.
The HR Department does not take employee concerns seriously, and someone's seniority has often been known to override HR's decisions on anything.
Directors, VPs and Managers of different departments are constantly at odds and don't work together at all.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the employees when they speak, because they have a better idea on improving leadership than you know. The leaders of different departments need to work much more cohesively. Upper management needs to choose better leaders, many of the leaders at blast are not fit to be managing their employees because they do not have the proper management experience or training. Blast Radius needs to mature as a company and a team before they can grow any further.

Pros

Flexible work schedule
Autonomy
Goodie Wednesday (treats every week)
Great IT team who are more than willing to help out with technical issues
Ability to get involved with aspects of the business that are outsode your usual competence
Learning how to work in a chaotic and fast paced environment (you become a master a juggling tasks)
Great for the resume when adding some high profile brands (Nike, Starbucks, Microsoft) that you might have worked with

Cons

Terrible project managment. Because each project is siloed with its own PM and you might work on multiple projects at any given time, each PM expects you to work 80% for them and when informing each PM that you don't have the time it isn't taken very well (it just makes you look bad)
Very young crowd which is great sometimes but can be a bit of an immature environment.
Senior technology management (some of whom have already left) are disingenuous. Watch out: They will clearly articulate one thing very passionately for you to get behind but unfortunately they rarely support it after the fact.
Filling out expense reports is absolutely ridiculous. You can lose half a day getting it right and trying to make sure it doesn't get rejected 2 weeks later (where you are out of pocket the whole time)
From a technology perspective not much excitment takes place. Most projects are so brief you barely get to build anything interesting.
You will work with some great people who will most likely leave Blast Radius fairly quickly once they realize the environment that they are in.
Due to the short nature of projects, the actual code and systems in place are very messy, poorly designed and most times not there. No time or money to do it the right way.
Tons of meetings (I can't tell you how many meetings I have been forced to be at where we're simply discussing how to schedule the actual meeting)
Reviews rarely translate into promotions and pay raises. Many employees openly discuss this dissappointment amongst themselves.

Advice to Senior Management

Employees are clearly dissatisfied. Instead of doing the same thing over and over again listen to them and find out why so many have already left the company.

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

casual work atmosphere, nice people, sabbatical

Cons

career path very vague, no opportunities to grow

Pros

Incredibly talented domain experts.
Fun work atmosphere .
The experts recognize talent when they see it.
Great domain leadership.
Beer on Fridays... sometimes!

Cons

Client services have no idea how to manage a client's unrealistic expectations. They also tend to promise things without having any idea what's going on.
Project management treats people like machines and thinks that we're all the same. They have a very strong belief in a 'man month'.
Culture enables overtime by introducing stigma to those who resist.

Advice to Senior Management

You're losing amazingly talented people to companies who treat their employees better and pay them more.
Remove bonuses to management based on gross margin -- this incentivizes a sweatshop mentality. Spread profits to the design/production teams.

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?