Didn't treat me right - Anonymous employee BlueToad Employee Review

1.0
Jun 4, 2014
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Office space was nice and bright and the lowliest peons got the most windows. Building location and facilities were nice. Most coworkers would commiserate with you. They made attempts at employee appreciation, like taking off work and going bowling on day each month. Relaxed dress code on most days, unless a client was coming to the office.

Cons

Only 6 paid days off for the whole year until you've worked there like 5 years. If you were in customer service you weren't allowed to take them around Christmas or Thanksgiving. Tried to make everyone work the Friday after Thanksgiving and the day before Christmas. It's an OFFICE, not a retailer or a restaurant or an essential service. There's no reason to even be open on Black Friday. Pay was extremely low. There were no performance reviews in place nor any raise despite working there for over a year. Very little feedback on job performance either positive or negative. Made little effort to address any problems they had with me. I was overqualified for my position. I was also lead to believe I would be doing something else when I was hired. My title did not match what I was actually doing. There was no formal job description and duties were just added on. It was difficult to get the resources we needed to do our jobs. All our office chairs were old, some had rips in them. I had to beg for pieces of furniture. The desks we were led to believe were new were in fact used desks and nasty. The executives would stand around in the hallway playing with their little putt putt golf in front of everybody and then get on us if we didn't look like we were working hard enough. Felt like I wasn't allowed to leave my desk. The CEO was very intimidating and would go around the office terrorizing people. In some cases throwing things around. Horrifying security practices. They didn't encrypt any of their passwords and everyone in the company could not only see end users passwords but would recite them to customers over the phone. They were encouraged to use them to log in to user accounts. This may not be true anymore since the company was hacked and underwent a security review. Training was shoddy and nearly non existent. I made some mistakes because I was simply not informed of the relationship between things. There was also pressure to do a massive amount of things as fast as you could. Then upper management would make you redo a whole bunch of things for no discernible reason. Upper management would play favorites with the clients and some were more important than others but it was never explained why. It was impossible to correctly predict what task had more priority over any other task and it was a mistake if you chose wrong.

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BlueToad Response
11y
I’m sorry your experience with our company was so horrible. Some good news - we now have rip-free office chairs. While no work environment is perfect, I don’t think your perspective of our company is entirely accurate or fair. But first, I do want to address some criticisms contained within your post that are grounded in some truth. As a young and growing company, our training process has not always been perfect. However, for some years now, significant training procedures have been implemented for the majority of the entry positions in our company. Moreover, at least once per year, every employee is formally reviewed and provided a pay adjustment. This admittedly did not always occur for all employees during the first few years of our company existence. Yes, we did in fact open the office for 1 Black Friday in our 8 year history. Sorry. We did this because we thought it was important in supporting our customers (some of whom work 24/7/365) and it was a mistake. On the flip note, we did provide Valentines day off one year (ok, by mistake on my part). We have always otherwise provided standard time off around Thanksgiving and Christmas and further tried to be reasonable and fair with the use of PTO around key holidays given our support commitments to our customers and partners. Now, some areas in which I take exception with your comments. At BlueToad, we have always provided excellent benefits, including 10 paid holidays and generous paid time off (all employees start with at least 2 weeks and at five years are entitled to between 17 and 22 days of paid time off). We also pay 100% of our employee healthcare, dental and vision costs. To be fair, there was a time when brand new employees were only entitled to 6 PTO days in their very first year. While I don’t find that entirely unreasonable, our policy has since changed. Second, our employee recognition activities have always been sincere efforts on our part to build teamwork and provide a fun and happy environment. Moreover, they have been for the most part employee led initiatives - not something simply dictated down from the top. Finally, our security practices have never been horrifying. I contend that they were reasonable given the types of information we deal with at our company. We were in fact the victim of a cyberattack in 2012. We had a forensic audit performed of our security practices. We have since gone from “reasonable" security practices to “exceptional" security practices. We have 24/7 intrusion detection services, conduct routine penetration testing, and code with best practices in mind. We also handle customer content in a secure and careful manner. Even though we do not deal with National secrets or personal health or financial information, data security is very important to us and is taken very seriously. One last note, I am a co-owner of the company and have been our CEO since 2012 and was previously President. I have never intimidated or terrorized people in our office. Quite the contrary, I care deeply about our employees. While our former CEO was not perfect, I believe this is also an unfair characterization of him.

Explore other reviews about BlueToad

5.0
Mar 9, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The team is small but efficient. Most of the employees I worked with had been with the organization for some time and had a lot of cohesion. The execs were part of day to day operations and drove the business on a day to day. But day to day did not mean micro managed. I generally felt everyone had a job and worked to move things forward each day.

Cons

Not many that I can think of. There is only so much growth with a business that is efficient with low turn over.

2.0
Oct 27, 2013
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very relaxed culture (shirts, shorts, hats -- all OK) Nice office space -- very open, large desks, nice views and great location Tight-knit and supportive group of co-workers Company invests in fun activities on a routine basis (bowling, movies, pot-lucks, parties, etc) The culture is all around great

Cons

Most of mgmt isn't very forward-thinking The publishing industry is filled with old people unwilling to bend and this company is often filled with young, unqualified people who don't know better. The result is the company often comes off as uninformed No room to grow -- promotions are mostly lateral moves as there is a lack of middle mgmt Senior mgmt is a boy's club that has a tendency to take things personally They hire anyone which leads to lovely situations like: sexual harassment, coworkers coming to work drunk/hungover, coworkers being accused of being high, petty gossiping and "clique" style animosity The pay is really, really low even by FL standards

4
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BlueToad Response
11y
Thank you for the positive comments that you did provide regarding our culture, office, and employees. Upward mobility can be a struggle in any small to mid-size company. We try to provide as much opportunity for our employees as possible. This includes coaching and development, as well as internal career advancement opportunities where appropriate. We are also very receptive to the needs of our employees and often work with them to find the best fit at our company for long-term success. Overall, we have put a lot of energy into organizational health over the last few years. We have developed our executive leadership team and built internal clarity around our mission, vision, and core values. We also have an exceptional group of hard-working employees and a burgeoning middle management team. I am proud of our entire team and our accomplishments over the years in terms of customer satisfaction and retention and overall customer and revenue growth. We are by no means a traditional publishing company. We are instead a technology solutions company in the digital content creation and distribution industry. We have superb, long-standing relationships with many commercial printers and publishers of content (magazines, journals, catalogs, circulars, and documents). I believe our success is centered around our core values, including our desire to maintain honest and transparent relationships with our partners, customers, and employees. People are people and no work environment is perfect. We try to create a rewarding employment opportunity by ensuring that we provide at a minimum fair pay, great culture, and great benefits. Although the minimum wage in Florida is $8.05, no one at our company makes less than $11.00 per hour. If we see employee behavior issues or concerns, we will take reasonable action to address them and provide a good work environment. We do not tolerate any type of harassment in our office, especially sexual harassment. To the extent there were “interpersonal relationship” issues amongst our employees in the past, I believe they have either been addressed long ago or no longer exist. We have built a professional work environment with a solid culture (as you acknowledge in your post), where happiness and family play an important role.
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