Was a great place to work, once. - Anonymous employee BDS Analytics Employee Review

1.0
Dec 7, 2020
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Fairly progressive social culture. Strong health benefits with vision and dental (at the time of writing). Interesting products. Smart and talented individual contributors. Things used to be much better, but it all changed in late 2019 when the company experienced a change in leadership.

Cons

CEO micromanages projects across every division, whether or not he has sufficient background knowledge to make the right decisions. CEO requires that every decision that may have an impact on "product" needs to have his input. This has created tremendous slow-downs or total paralysis for some project teams. CEO does not follow processes or chain-of-command for managing projects. Instead of delegating through managers, he goes directly to individual contributors to ask them to do work. This has resulted in massive communication problems, since managers are often the last to know about "priority shifts". Organizational leadership actively sabotages the efforts of staff to get organized and implement processes, claiming that the decisions need to be made by the right people and then never following up . Organizational leadership delays committing to important decisions until the last critical moment, leaving individual contributors to scramble to implement critical technologies without proper planning or testing. Leadership does not seem to believe in professional development or coaching; instead employees who are perceived to be under-performing are given the silent treatment and their roles are reduced until they quit or they are laid off because the org is "downsizing their role". Then leadership hires new people to do the same job with a more junior job title for less money. The CEO will actively bully individuals during group calls, singling out individuals to make fun of their spelling, handwriting, personal interests, or clothing that they wore that day. The CEO will openly express his negative opinions about specific employees if they are not in the room. He will disparage the quality of their work, their professional skills, or their intelligence. The CEO will solicit feedback from people, and then respond with hostility or dismissal when employees do provide feedback. As a result, all calls for "feedback" are now met with total silence from all individual contributors. SMEs are often silenced, or their expert opinions are discarded because they are inconvenient. As a result, there are several critical issues regarding product quality. The CEO will not commit to a single priority or vision for the brand. There are always 5-8 conflicting priorities. The CEO is always telling the employees "Take a minute and really make sure that you are working on the most important thing." But when asked to articulate the most important thing, he can't. Organizational leadership created a "Diversity Panel" and heavily pressured individuals from minority groups to participate and provide feedback to the organization about how to improve diversity. Most members of the panel who represented minority groups dropped out, and now the Diversity Panel is lead by a white man. I'm not sure how salaries worked out for other employees, but I personally am making 40% less than I would working for a different company in the same role.

Explore other reviews about BDS Analytics

5.0
May 7, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I would 100% encourage you to apply! There are many pro's of working at BDSA - and the leadership team continues to make the company an even better place to work month over month. As a current employee, I am actually quite taken back by some of the negative comments listed below. Sure, this last year and a half has been hard for most companies in many ways (2020 - May, 2021), although BDSA continues to grow at an exciting pace in support of clients needs and the booming cannabis industry, Along with that growth comes higher expectations of it's employees, bigger goals, new product development initiatives, etc. Over the last year and a half - BDSA has continued to hit goals - and the leadership team rewards it's employees for the hard work put in to hit company targets. Here are a few pro's that sick out to me: --Outstanding reputation amongst cannabis industry professionals and in CPG/BevAlc industries. --Leadership team that is personable, professional, approachable, friendly, and extremely intelligent and strategic. --Smart, driven, and kind-hearted staff that knows how to both have fun and be heads-down at work. --Unlimited PTO and flexible time off. --401K matching/free dental/vision --Streamlined internal processes that allow employees to see projects through to completion. --Interesting work/products that help propel the entire cannabis industry forward through insightful data and research. --Laid back office culture, while also remaining professional at all times.

Cons

None the mention right now.

1
2.0
Dec 8, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

WFH, generous benefits, talented colleagues

Cons

Leadership was slow to adapt to changing industry conditions. Salaries were well below comps in other industries. Poor management decisions led to a lot of valuable employees being laid off or leaving for better opportunities.

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