Cobalt Group Reviews

Pros

Creative, Passionate, Thinking out of Box, Challenging, Innovative, Respect, Management easily approachable, Open Culture

Cons

Growth relatively slow, Running out of options to expand Business

Advice to Senior Management

Please hunt for new opportunities to expand Business

Pros

There's a reason I've worked at Cobalt for a long time - lots of them actually.

The biggest one is that I feel like I belong here. There's a strong sense of community at Cobalt, and that's been true since day one (over ten years ago for me). There have been some hard times and some great times, and I've always felt like my work matters, like I make a difference, and like I can use my experience and knowledge to help others. That feeling comes from John Holt - he does his best to make sure that everyone feels a part of Cobalt, and he's a big part of why I've stuck with my work here.

There's a lot of room for growth and change at Cobalt. I've had a number of different jobs here, ranging from technical to creative and back again. Each time, with only a couple exceptions, the moves have been something I sought and was encouraged to seek by my managers. In the cases where I had to move to a different position, because of layoffs or similar changes, my new team always found a way to make the best of it. My most recent position was sort of a "forced" move, but honestly I feel that I'm in the best place I could be right now, in a position uniquely suited to my talents and abilities.

When the chips were down, Cobalt found a place for me - at least twice for certain, and probably more than that. I can't help but appreciate that, and I don't think I would find it in most other companies this size.

What else? The benefits at Cobalt are excellent and most managers are understanding and flexible with scheduling. There's a very open environment here, where you can ask anything and not be made to feel like an idiot for it. Any ideas are welcome, which is a great feeling. Most jobs here are challenging, and if you are the type of person to seek more challenge, you'll find it!

And have I mentioned my growing collection of Cobalt pint glasses? Each employee gets a new one every year, on the company's anniversary. My cabinet's getting full. I love them!

The company itself is in a good place, part of a strong and necessary industry and positioned well to succeed. Simply put, I feel like I'm in the right place because I'm a part of that success.

And just to be clear, I'm a real person with a real career and real experiences. There's plenty of real people to go round at Cobalt.

Cons

Cobalt is part of the automotive industry, which can be hard in itself - as the auto industry business rises and falls, so (to some degree) does Cobalt. Our customers can be demanding and sometimes hard to work with, and that can make for a stressful day, no matter what your position is.

Within the organization, there are frequent process changes and interdepartmental shifts, so you have to be willing to roll with the changes, even when you don't like them. Documentation and communication across departments can be difficult sometimes - it's a weakness that many are aware of and finally, with some new tools coming, one that we are making traction on doing something about. It's been a long, hard road to get there, and we're not all the way there yet.

Cobalt's such a big company that sometimes it's easy to get lost in your own world. I remember when it was small enough that you could almost know everyone's name, and somebody (anybody!) leaving was a pretty big deal. As much as I love our growth, I sometimes miss the smaller company feel of it, and sometimes I don't find out someone has left the company for a long time. It's too easy, now, to be insulated from the company as a whole in favor of your team or your department.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the open atmosphere and the sense of community alive at Cobalt, and bolster it with improved avenues of communication across departments. Give us the tools to do great things and you know we will. Encourage team-building, not just within teams and departments, but across them too. What still makes Cobalt best is the same as it ever was - the feeling of being a part of something big. Please don't forget that. Keep inspiring us.

Pros

The culture isn't bad, most of the people who work here are decent, and the benefits are actually really good.

Cons

The company focuses way too much on new products without making sure their old ones work properly. It ends up being a very hectic place to work, since there's usually some emergency or other that could have been avoided.

Advice to Senior Management

Start budgeting some maintenance time for your products and start asking your customers what they want to see for the new stuff.

Pros

I used to love Cobalt. I truly did. I started roughly two years ago during their huge GM contract and the place was everything I could ever ask for: freedom to do your own thing as long as the quality was there, no dress-code, a very understanding and friendly management group who seemed to have your career in their own interests, food/beer on Fridays...it was a genuinely good place to work.

Cons

And then December of 2008 happened...

A wave of lay-offs hit and the company has never been the same since. Management became much more cut-throat towards everyone, both the "slackers" and those that always pulled their weight and then some. They started riding their work-horse employees so hard that eventually many moved on and those that didn't stopped putting forth the effort for their own sanity seeing it wasn't leading them anywhere.

Instead of bringing in qualified talent they now hire just about anyone off the street because they can be paid less. No experience in professional writing, HTML, account management, or anything that Cobalt actually needs in its employees? No problem! Cobalt would LOVE to speak to you (if you're willing to take far, FAR less than the market average). With this unqualified employee pool the quality of work has plummeted and there's not enough of the truly "good" employees left to fix things. Most people remain silent on any issues facing them as those that have spoken up often found themselves written up, ineligible for any raise/promotion, or tossed out the door. It's a total dictatorship.

Cobalt's been on a slow and painful downward spiral towards oblivion for quite some time now, and the situation just continues to get worse. Instead of discussing career opportunities within Cobalt management has been telling us to keep our eyes peeled outside Cobalt for work. If that's not a sign additional cut-backs are coming I don't know what is.

It's such a shame. I genuinely liked coming to work at Cobalt once upon a time.

Advice to Senior Management

Your quest for the almighty dollar is going to ultimately cost you more than you realize. Sure, you may be saving a dollar or two hiring someone who was painting houses last week, but you're driving away those who can actually help your company grow. However, I will say you do a great job brainwashing your new employees into thinking it's a great place to work, as reading recent reviews here it seems that the new-hires think it's awesome. Then again, it could all be HR creating false accounts to make this place seem like the paradise it once was.

Pros

Relaxed dress code, great salary, decentish benefits, support for a healthy work-life balance, and they really know how to throw a party. Chances to learn things outside your paygrade if you're curious.

Cons

The software is shoddy -- supporting it sucks, because it's ancient and decrepit and no one knows how it's supposed to work anymore, but the Dev guys aren't allowed to actually do maintenance for most products except when there's an OEM endorsement in danger or in other extreme cases. Instead, upper management keeps insisting on painting another layer of shellac over the broken system and hoping that this new shiny layer of paint will magically make the underlying layers better.

Security is also shoddy -- a number of things that could bring certain services and functions to a screeching halt are "protected" only by having people not know where to look for them. And no one seems to care.

The culture is ill -- lazy, incompetent sycophants are allowed to do whatever they want (you want to take six smoke breaks before lunch? Go ahead!) and get promoted, people who work hard and well but fail to kowtow to management get fired or laid off. On my (large!) team, I do not trust over half of them to be competent unsupervised, and I trust my team a lot more than any of the other teams in my org!

Advice to Senior Management

Start investing in maintaining the products we have, not just coming out with new ones. It's absurd and embarrassing that some of our primary customer-facing tools date back to 2003 or earlier and have no real development effort being put into them. Yes, making and selling new products is sexier, but improving the ones we have already would increase employee satisfaction AND customer retention as well as customer satisfaction!

Pros

For the most part, fun co workers, good benefits, and flexible hours. Some decent ideas and innovations but poor excecution...

Cons

Poorly run from the top down, fire drills every other day, middle mgmt has no idea what the people working for them actually do so they have no idea how to motivate, inspire or challenge them. Grandiose ideas that no one knows how to accomplish, measuring job function and not the results creating a 'do just enough not to get fired' attitude and resulting in poor customer experiences. Behind the times technology but with a stance that cobalt's offering is better than all the competition.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a look at what the true end goal is; more revenue for the company. Without having a full grasp on what the customer facing employees are doing, this goal will never be reached.

Pros

Some of my peers were superb and challenged me to do a better job. I liked being able to park and walk to Qwest/Safeco fields for games.

Cons

Management has no clue as to what they are doing. They did not weather the economic downturn in Automotive well. They continued to give the "Rah, Rah" speeches even when their biggest client had to declare bankruptcy. And their quarterly reviews were a joke - their accounting methods were based on fairy tales. And they continued to dangle the line that they were going public. Please, like that will ever happen.

There are too many directors and not enough people to get the job done. And in one wave of layoffs - there have been multiple - they laid off a group of people who all were over 40.

I cannot say enough to stay away from this company at all costs. You will go in thinking, maybe these opinions are just from "bad apples." But you will find all of this to be true and more.

Advice to Senior Management

Think about selling the company to the next wave that offers it instead of turning it down. Get a clue about your leadership. They are some of the most negative, spiteful people I have ever come across.

Pros

Constant challenge, I love our dynamic atmosphere and how supportive our colleagues are!

Cons

If working in a constantly changing environment is not for you, then Cobalt can be stressful.

Advice to Senior Management

Management is great, keeps us in the loop and invests time and energy in promoting charitable activities in the community.

Pros

Very transparent communication from everyone. Interesting work for customers that everyone has heard of. Opportunity to work on interesting and challenging projects that are very visible and have a positive impact on how automotive dealers do business. Great place to get experience working with online marketing technologies. Everyone has an opportunity to make a visible impact. Solid business model with a lot of potential for revenue and profit growth.

Cons

The nature of the work demands frequently changing priorities. Only folks who are resilient and enjoy this environment will thrive here.

Advice to Senior Management

Get out in front of your customers and come up with innovative solutions before they do to avoid needing to scramble to meet their needs.

Pros

The company offers a very competitive compensation and benefits package. The company is very supportive of a good balance between work and personal life.

Cons

The only way you can advance in this company is if you fall into the corporate cult mentality and have an undying loyalty to management. It's almost difficult to accomplish anything useful and noteworthy for your personal career because of constantly changing business priorities caused by over commitment to customers by sales and business development. Since GM is one of their biggest customers and make up about 50% of their revenue expect to see more layoffs, hiring freezes, and job cuts in the next year.

Advice to Senior Management

There's too many layers of management in this company and you could do better and save more money by cutting down these added layers and use the money you save to hire talented people so that employees aren't over-worked. Take a better look at what each member of the management team does and ask yourselves whether they are actually adding value or if their presence just adds stress.