Nightmare - Anonymous employee Black Spectacles Employee Review

I am sorry that your experience working at Black Spectacles was such that you felt compelled to write this review. Since I started Black Spectacles in 2010, I’ve worked with perhaps one hundred employees, freelancers, and vendors, and this is our first review on Glassdoor. I’ve been reading articles about how to respond to negative reviews on Glassdoor, and they all say that you should say thank you and write that you’re working to fix things at your company. The trouble is that the things you’ve written here are literally the opposite of the work culture that exists at our company. So I can’t in good faith write about how we’re trying to fix problems that don’t exist. So instead, I’ll take this as an opportunity to publicly explain how things really work at Black Spectacles and what we believe in. Black Spectacles is a healthy, thriving work environment that runs on core values, mutually agreed-upon goals, and lots and lots of communication. Many companies have values that are pasted on the wall and that no one lives. We’ve worked hard to live our values and to do everything we can to ensure that the folks who join our team align with our values. For example, at our weekly team meetings and biweekly 1-1s, we ask everyone to share their observations of teammates living our values, resulting in hundreds of shout-outs from our team to their teammates. At Black Spectacles, we walk the walk when it comes to core values. I’ve never experienced anything like it as a professional. It’s truly world class. We have a number of values, but first I’d like to write a little bit about trust. In the video on our careers page, I talk about trust. We filmed that a few years back, and it felt old-fashioned to talk about the trust in our company: trust among teammates and trust between managers and their teams, trust that you will figure it out, trust that we’ll support you along the way, and trust that it’s OK to make mistakes. It’s because of our trust as a team that we’ve attained such success. In six years, we went from not having any test-prep products to being the leader in architecture test prep. There is no way we would have achieved that if our culture had been like what you describe. Instead, we’ve had to be trusting, open-minded, nimble, creative, respectful, disciplined, careful and entrepreneurial. It’s with these values that our business has grown so fast—in fact Inc Magazine recognized our little venture as the eleventh fastest growing education company in its INC. 5000 program. God knows that growing that fast isn’t easy, but as everyone on the team can attest, during this period of rapid growth my leadership team and I have worked to surround ourselves with mentors and learning opportunities to ensure we’re growing a wonderful business. And so far, we’ve been successful. It’s my greatest accomplishment as a professional—an accomplishment fueled by many mentors and teachers and an open mind. One of the key ways that we’re able to work so well is that managers and teammates develop mutually agreed-upon goals. Once those goals are agreed upon, expectations are clear for everyone, and it allows folks to work autonomously. Our teammates always know what is expected of them and how well they are doing. Of course, when folks aren’t achieving their goals we address those instances privately in the 1-1, not in public. I believe that feedback, whether good or bad, needs to be shared regularly, which is why we exchange feedback biweekly. The biweekly 1-1 keeps the lines of communication open, so that teammates can share feedback with their managers about the company in general, about our values, and about anything they need to get off their chest. It’s also a regular discussion about performance, so you don’t have to wait twelve months to find out whether your boss is happy or disappointed. You get to talk about your performance every two weeks. This helps create a productive and positive working environment. Nothing is brushed under the rug or allowed to fester until it becomes a big problem. We’re all open, transparent, vulnerable, and professional about how things are going. You asserted a collection of other things- that I don’t let my teammates meet my architecture friends; that I crack jokes about interior designers, women, and minorities; and that I’m embarrassed by my employees. One of my personal values is to be respectful and compassionate. I don’t really know how to respond to these false assertions other than to suggest that folks ask anyone if that is even remotely close to how I behave. I’ll let that speak for itself. There are two things that are true in this review. 1. It’s true that we ask folks to sign a confidentiality agreement when they start. We ask folks to keep our work in the office confidential. This seems fair to me. 2. That I’m moody. That’s probably true. In all honesty this has been the hardest yet most rewarding thing I’ve ever accomplished professionally—though every time I think I have it figured out, I am confronted with something new I don’t know how to do… like responding to Glassdoor reviews! If you have any questions or would like to discuss further, don’t hesitate to reach out to me personally via email. Marc Teer CEO Black Spectacles