Bronto Software Reviews

Pros

Great location
Supportive of local community
Encouraging of employee participation in social and corporate activities
Privately funded - no VC backing to de-rail the vision of the owners

Cons

Cost of healthcare to employees
Policies can be strict for corporate travel

Advice to Senior Management

Keep reminding employees how to be good citizens of their community and use the resources available to them to make a difference.

Pros

Fun atmosphere where mgmt made sure there were plenty of social events.
No one had offices so there was a perception of an open door policy.
Less stress compared to a larger, more mature company.
Very, very laid back. If that's your thing. this is the place for you.

Cons

Located in North Carolina, where the small town culture and lack of talent based on local technical/people friendly resources (even with multiple great universities in the area) was obvious. Just ask someone there how many females are employed? How many non white ethnicities?
The company has no major aspirations, so you don't feel the growth or aggressive innovation you'd see at another, more technical and proactive company. It's not exciting, which can be challenging for younger, hungrier employees wanting to grow their careers with a recognizable firm on their resume.
Politics ruled everything. Many incompetent employees were kept onboard simply because of how good of friends they were with leadership, whereas with another company, they'd be gone for lack of performance. The hiring bar was low - again, back to politics and how well you knew leadership over your ability to be a rockstar.
Compensation is pretty minimal compared to other high tech or marketing roles in the region. However, the founders never missed a chance to show off how much money they make by spending frivolously on expensive parties or plastering pics of their homes up for everyone to see.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire more competent leaders and stop micromanaging everything.
Stop holding your company back in the kiddie pool...if you want to grow and swim with the big boys, you're going to have to make some tough decisions. The recent attrition of sr mgmt shows that people are self selecting new careers based on lack of opportunity at Bronto.

Pros

Good location and laid back environment

Cons

Clueless senior management team and even more clueless sales mgmt. Both sales directors are inexpereinced (one worked at the Macaroni Grill as a server and the other hasn't held a job for more than a year). Just check out their linked in profiles. And to make matters worse, one of the sales directors cannot be trusted and will take opportunites from the other team. If you are in sales... consider other places to work.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire better sales directors that know what they are doing.

Pros

Great location on the American Tobacco Campus
Flexible schedule
Stable in comparison to alot of other industries and companies.
fun environment, social activities not all include social drinking as some reviewers have implied.
Variety of personalities to keep it interesting
free snacks
nice people to work with

Cons

Variety of personalities to keep it interesting

Advice to Senior Management

Continue transparency in communication

Pros

American Tobacco Campus is a nice place to work.
There are a lot of energetic people at the lower levels who try hard.

Cons

C-level management don't know how to run a business or manage people, more focused on pumping their own egos.
Their hires put similarly incompetent yesmen/yeswomen at the VP level.
The bad management extends down into the organization resulting in people leaving because either 1) they should never have been hired in the first place and get fired or 2) they were a good hire who gets frustrated at all the incompetence.

Advice to Senior Management

Put your egos aside, recognize that you are in over your heads and hire a real manager to run the business.

Pros

Some very good people buried in the insanity that is Bronto, Beer drinking strongly encouraged, good food and snacks

Cons

It's like a club house for 20 year olds, senior management lacks the ability to recognize basic business functions and the incompetency of their managers, pay is low, 401k match is a joke, it has turned into a churn and burn place for straight out of college kids. Don't go there if you want a successful sales career. Just look at the linkedin profiles of their directors and vp of sales

Pros

Somehow (probably due to a good office and location) Bronto does draw in some decent people, especially in engineering.

Cons

The two owners (CEO and COO) are incompetent at almost every level of business. It is amazing this company continues on as its always an internal battle to clean up their decisions. The VPs are about 1/2 good and 1/2 as bad as the owners - if not for some decent engineers and some decent marketing people, this company wouldn't have made it to where it is. For what its worth, the employee is the last thing Bronto cares about.

Advice to Senior Management

Sell

Pros

Bronto can be a fun place to work if you are in your twenties and like to play games in the middle of the day.

Cons

The salaries are very low - especially for women. Senior management is very frugal when it comes to a lot of things - benefits, outings, business trips, etc. The only reason they received the "Best Places to Work" award is because they are *constantly* asking their employees to write in and vote for them.

Advice to Senior Management

Better training for the tech support team, and spend more time understanding the market place.

Pros

Fun environment and some good people in the ranks. Emphasis on socialization and community volunteering.

Cons

Management are completely inept. The C-levels have never managed people or a company before so they are out of their depth and unsympathetic to the workforce. Too much focus on creating new features when existing features have bugs and desperately need engineering time to fix. No upward mobility in Client Services department.

Advice to Senior Management

Sell the company to someone who knows how to run a successful software business. Fire the dead weight in management who have had terrible performance reviews year after year. Cultivate from within. Improve benefits (401k match is abysmal, stock options are a joke, health insurance is expensive with high copays).

Pros

People like working at Bronto, are excited about their jobs, and work well together. Culture is very important, and "team" is important.

Cons

No distinction between PTO and vacation time off. Organically funded company means that resources can be scarce, but this forces more creativity.

Advice to Senior Management

Take funding.