Tucows Reviews

Pros – - stable hours
- company is reputable
- great benefits
- free fruit throughout the day
- knowledgeable and caring team leaders
- Nice offce chairs
- friendly receptionist
- cake sometimes
- will look good on a resume due to the industry being covered (mobile Android services in particular)
- Great opportunity to use as a stepping stone to a better career somewhere else
- nice patio to sit on during breaks complete with a BBQ

Cons – - non competitive salary
- shift work that does not respect family life balance
- vindictive "political" management that treats (terrorizes) front line staff with a lack of respect while putting up a veneer of respectability to those management reports to.
- Feeling that it's much better to keep your mouth shut than offer any input at all
- Offering input will often end up giving you a bigger workload with no thanks or extra pay. Or fired.
- performance reviews/manager meetings that are "set ups" (it's predetermined if your review is going to be "good" or "bad" even if you ARE doing "good" or "bad". Your work reviews are often based on office politics rather than actual metrics. Reviews based on management petty personal likes and dislikes rather than actual performance even when being reviewed by caring team leaders
- being expected to work every single Holiday by department management with a complete lack of respect for family life balance
- Customer Advisors often miss staff appreciation parties and staff events - ironically due to having to work (parties that could have been scheduled when everyone was off). The "appreciation" parties are scheduled to fit the downstairs developers departments schedule, as well as management's schedule. The scheduling needs of those upstairs is ignored.
- Huge gulf between downstairs developers and upstairs Customer Service Advisors in terms of (feeling of) respect, pay and overall treatment
- call centre type setup. A distinct feeling that staff are not looked at as professionals but as McCall Centre Employees by both management and downstairs half of the company
- new processes introduced with little to NO training at all. Staff expected to instantly understand new processes despite lack of product training. Failures in terms of customer satisfaction passed onto/blamed on front line staff and team leaders by senior management rather than taking responsibility for THEIR failures
- very little room to advance despite promises of implementing a better advancement structure
- lack of appreciation from Management
- the feeling that one can never "do enough", even when giving one's all
- Being asked to come in at 7 in the morning for staff meetings by department management when shift doesn't start until 12 (senior management starts at 8, very convienient. For them)
- fellow colleagues that for the most part are "putting in their time for a cheque" rather than being excited to go to work
- constantly berated when doing things wrong, ignored when doing really great things
- almost no communication between upper elechon management and upstairs staff. All communications handled through one senior manager. A feeling of not only being disconnected from the rest of the employees downstairs, but also of not being considered as important

Advice to Senior Management – Tucows is currently seen as a stepping stone to bigger and better places. Start treating your staff properly.

Pros – Great employees to work with. Access to public transportation. Location is convient to highway access, though traffic may be congested at times. Pay is relatively good, but high work expectations reflect the level of pay.

Cons – No job security. No recognition of employee effort. Frustrating work environment, Poor communication. Low employee morale. Difficult to work with management. This company had lots of potential but change is slow and upper management is slow to respond.

Advice to Senior Management – Better staff/management communication is essential to morale.

Pros – Some terrific team members; very knowledgeable not just about technology. Photography, cycling, food, health, exercise. A very sharing community. Still in touch with many of my past colleagues. Summer and year end parties are a blast. Good health benefits.

Cons – Management's direction is often misguided. Even HR has frightful turnover.
Management plays hurtful head games: to avoid paying severance to employees they've decided to dismiss, they start giving aggressively negative feedback in an effort to get them to resign. No recognition of employee effort.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop starving divisions of resources. Allow divisions to provide input into their own direction. Show employees some respect.

Pros – Great industry and very safe organization to work in terms of longevity. Customers are stickied to the product making it difficult to lose revenue from main revenue stream, so the stability, while can appear unstable, is very safe from going under. There are pockets of greatness within the organization that once aboard these teams the opportunities and experiences are very valuable for future development. The compensation and benefits for the staff are great, and are distributed to every level of the organization. This includes 3 weeks vacation, a great health spending account, RRSP matching plans and a shutdown during the Christmas holidays that do not reflect your personal vacation time.

Cons – Lack of leadership and support amongst parts of the mid-senior management team making it difficult to promote change. Organization as a whole has challenges learning from their mistakes. Half of the organization was working to win, the other half not engaged and more concerned with protecting themselves making it a challenging environment to work. Understaffed in certain departments for an organization of their reputation, callibre and ranking in the industry. Overstaffed in other areas. Slow to execute on great ideas which continuously makes them second rate when they used to be considered pioneers. That makes for a morale killing experience.

Advice to Senior Management – You have great ideas, start executing and delivering in a timely manor.

Pros – Small enough to be nimble. Large enough to make a difference and pays decently though could be better. Entrepreneurial spirit in the company. Good CEO.

Cons – Unrealistic growth goals, quarter to quarter thinking. High employee turnover.

Advice to Senior Management – Treat your people better. Improve their pay.

Pros – A lot of concern with having people in roles they're aligned with and a strong focus on corporate culture are great.

Cons – Few opportunities for career advancement.

Advice to Senior Management – More opportunity for advancement within would reduce staff turnover.

Pros – Management let us do our jobs without interference
Salary and benefits were satisfactory
Work environment was pleasant
Free lunch and snacks

Cons – As off site employees we felt removed from the "real" Tucows
Communication was difficult when management was in another country

Advice to Senior Management – Keep employee morale and communication high on the list
Management team should talk to all levels of employees more often

Pros – Agile methodology
Flat organization structure
Outstanding programmers

Cons – A lot of technical debts

Advice to Senior Management – nothing

Pros – Offers amazing customer service to customers. Strong support for members of the customer service team.

Cons – Not on a subway line and parking can be expensive. Ride a bike!

Advice to Senior Management – Management has an open door policy. If I had something to say, I'll say it to them. :)