Cobalt Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Cobalt

Pros – Casual atmosphere, relaxed schedules and good people.

Cons – Leadership unfocused, silo-ed working atmosphere, confusing directives, unclear path to advancement, bad benefits and pay that's not up to industry standards.

Advice to Senior Management – Enhance visibility between groups in the company, define paths to advancement with more than just HR seminars, provide clear goals and directives for the entire company that trickle down in a meaningful way to the departments.

Former Employee – worked at Cobalt

Pros – For the most part, I really enjoyed my time at Cobalt. I got there as a pretty green worker in my field, and I was able to experience tremendous professional growth in a very relaxed and fun atmosphere. Additional responsibility, and some opportunity were there for the ambitious or interested workers (that was the rumor, at least). But working with some very talented and positive people was what made working there great. Had a blast, actually.

Cons – Cobalt, for me, was like the minor leagues. It's a place to refine your skills, have some great times with your teammates, but you're mostly hoping it's a temporary thing because you're never going to advance or really get paid in the minors. I felt salary containment, especially for the non-mangement roles, must have been a very strategic and top down approach. That's not a criticism as business is business and earnings are earnings, but ultimately it was a heavy "con" for the individual contributor like me. But, Cobalt did a lot to position me for my next job, were the 3+ years of stagnant/flat pay were easily erased as I found myself worth 50% than I was making when I returned to the job market. So, absolutely no regrets and I really do pull for this company to succeed.

Advice to Senior Management – I left just before ADP came in, so fight to keep the Cobalt culture intact and pay to keep your existing talent if you want to address the turnover issue.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Cobalt

Pros – nice office building to work in. good location, near train and uwajimaya

Cons – boring repetative work, no chance for advancement

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Cobalt

Pros – - Decent pay and benefits
- Good work/life balance
- Convenient location
- open office where even the CEO sits in a cube
- Fun/smart coworkers and good management
- Good software process and tool set

Cons – - Work can be mundane
- Negligible raises and promotion chances are almost zero
- ADP paperwork and processes are cumbersome

Advice to Senior Management – With the ADP acquisition, cobalt certainly lost the cool factor and is becoming stale. There should be some process to recognize and show appreciation for people who did a good job. Giving a 1-2 percent annual raise is not going to cut it and people are going to leave sooner or later

Current Employee – been working at Cobalt

Pros – Convenient location, employee paid Orca cards, casual attire, overall nice group of people to work with. Deep ADP pockets will make some projects available that were formerly pipe dreams

Cons – Being part of the ADP machine means more off shore dev, more paperwork, fewer paid holidays, no beer on site for parties, and risk that good senior Coalitions will leave in 6-12 months as retention bonuses and remaining options mature.

Advice to Senior Management – ADP should ensure that the key top execs remain for another 3-5 yrs. If ADP were to bring in outside Dealer Services people to Seattle things will go south fast. The best thing Cobalt has going for it is that its NOT ADP....yet. ADP dealer services is a male dominated, old boy network that will crush the corporate culture of Cobalt if allowed to permeate.

Current Employee – been working at Cobalt

Pros – Many opportunities for career growth and development
Growing company, exciting/interesting product/service offering - Marketing meets Technology; great marriage
Creative and diverse culture
Challenging and Rapid Change

Cons – Apr 2011 - Rapid change brings bigger challenges and higher demands on work force

Advice to Senior Management – Do not make hasty decisions and take time to consider impacts to systems, production, and morale. It is easy to ask for forgiveness later, but sometime good people do not forgive and decide to work elsewhere.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Cobalt

Pros – Some of the best reasons for working at the Cobalt Group include great culture, competent management, openness in communication and freedom to express your thoughts.

Cons – Growth within a team depends a lot on your manager. Also, training within the teams can be improved. You might get stuck working on the same thing for many years. Pay is not the best in the industry.

Advice to Senior Management – There is not much innovation going on within the company. Training can be improved. Data sharing across teams can also be improved.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Cobalt

Pros – 1. Strong leadership team that has successfully created and grown multiple new product and service offerings with revenues over 10 million dollars each.
2. Deep technical talent. Cobalt's systems are highly scalable and the technology investments are made to support doing with software what many companies do with operations head count.
3. While successful in the past and creating a company sold to ADP for $400 million dollars, there is still a tremendous amount of growth available and Cobalt has the OEM relationships and existing dealership customers to take advantage of the opportunity.

Cons – Traditionally the location was one of mixed blessings, providing cheap parking and great access to the freeways, but poor dining out options and the need to plan around baseball game day traffic. The company is moving to the international district at the end of the year, which will enable easy bus and train commutes and great lunch options at the downside of costly parking.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep it up.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Cobalt

Pros – Relaxed dress code and an ideal location for employees who live on the north side. Some great ideas for products. Opportunity to work on some name brand companies.

Cons – The CEO is a charismatic and visionary leader and was the initial reason why I decided to stay with the company even once the glow of a new job wore off. Even my manager, who really treats us like respected individuals and listens to our ideas may not be able to keep me much longer. I was warned by my peers early on not to cross a certain VP or speak a contradictory viewpoint as once that's done, you can forget any chance of a promotion or transfer, even if you are in a low position. In my team I have seen this come to pass and it disappointed me. This fits with a previous review I read that you must "drink the koolaid" and then promote the koolaid. Do not doubt that for a minute. Information is funneled from the top down with very little transparency and to criticize is to doom yourself. And be careful if you cross the functional silos. You may be offered up for slaughter if you screw up, unless you are on one of the lucky teams whose manager truly cares about you as a person and what you bring to the job.

The idea behind the company is a good one. If developed and leveraged correctly it would yield incredible results. Unfortunately product directions change so often we can't keep up with what we are required to do; forget what we should be doing. I can't help but think this is a distorted vision of what our CEO originally set out to create and I don't know what will happen now that a much larger company, ADP, has acquired us. Maybe our department will be provided an actual vision now, who knows. Initial transparency on the acquisition was quite good but has faded dramatically to almost zilch in the last month. This trend, coupled with a senior management team that lacks clarity and focus, keeps me from referring others even though we have openings, as I can't in good faith put them in this position.

I saw a few posts where good work/life balance was mentioned. I don't know if I agree with that entirely. It's incredibly rare that anyone works more than 8 hours a day. I believe this is due more to poor morale than a true work/life balance way of thinking. On the vast majority of teams, no one works more than their 8 hours because they don't want to. This is something that higher salaries, which I think are needed in some areas, will not fix. All in all, not remotely what I expected when I signed up.

Advice to Senior Management – There is a deep rooted morale problem that must be addressed. I think it's a known issue but you are hoping it will fix itself. It won't. Ask us employees how we feel and what we need to do to improve the morale and in turn we will show you what we can really do. You may be surprised with how insightful we are if you listen. Also, determine a strategy with the products and stop changing them every month.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Cobalt

Pros – Happy hour Friday's - good company culture among the individual contributors. Good location with pretty cheap parking which is nice for being downtown.

Cons – I felt like I couldn't trust the VP over my team. I didn't feel that they necessarily made decisions based on what was best for the team and not just best for their ego.

Advice to Senior Management – That promotions be based on merit - and that they shouldnt' just hire someone from outside everytime there is a lead or management opportunity. Employees will just have to go elsewhere for career growth like I did.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend