Pros
Not a single reason to work here.
Cons
If you have any level of self respect for yourself or morals, do NOT work here! CIQ acquired EFundamentals 16 months ago for its logos, talented employees and for a platform which was far superior to theirs and in no time at all they destroyed a thriving business, its values and people. Rather than keeping the extremely knowledgeable Engineering team they decided cheap labour in India could do a better job and made the whole department redundant. Don't expect to be rewarded for your work either because leadership will tell you one thing and deliver something else with all manner of excuses and lies to cover themselves up. At the start of the year we had annual salary reviews, which equated to everyone being blanketed with a 2-2.5% pay rise, regardless of what was worked out in employees' 9 box reviews which was a massive waste of everyone's time. When confronting the Director of HR and Director of Engineering in India about such a low raise that doesn't even touch inflation, we were met with an array of excuses, one being "There is no money" to only hear a couple of months later from the CEO in an all hands meeting that the company has enough money for 10 years. The Director of HR informed us that our annual bonus was also included in our raise, so in fact our raise was higher. The annual bonus is AAR based and not guaranteed and when asking HR about this and if we didn't hit our target the next year would the bonus still be included in this case she had no response other than "no".....it can't be both ways!! Either raise the annual % or guarantee bonuses! They also took salary advice from an outsourced company that put people's salaries in the UK under minimum wage, which they seemed perfectly happy to accept despite being informed that this was illegal in the UK! Oh and just to slap you in the face even more the employees of EFundamentals received a 5% “Welcome to CommerceIQ!” bonus when the merger happened…..this was later also stated to be part of your annual salary review, despite that NEVER being communicated when it happened. We were just informed it was a kind act of the company to smooth the transition. The CEO, Guru Hariharan, is a narcissist who surrounds himself with “Yes men”. Do not disagree with him or go against his will as you will find yourself out of a job pretty quickly. He promotes “professionalism” whilst swearing worse than Brian Blessed during company wide meetings. He idolizes Jeff Bezos which is fitting as he treats his employees the same. Oh and let's not forget the charity work he did in India, building a school for kids that cost him less than his first class plane ticket to get over there. There is a culture of fear in this business. Initially the company wide meetings gave you an anonymous platform to ask questions, which people did liberally. But when leadership and HR didn’t like the questions people asked they simply deleted, ignored and informed people in the meeting that such honest questions would not be accepted. So they changed it up and didn’t allow anonymous questions to be asked after this as they obviously wanted people to be held accountable so they could chase them up after, despite being encouraged time and time again to be transparent. The only questions that are now asked openly are from Guru’s “Yes men '' whilst everyone else cowers so they do not put their jobs on the line. Oh and whilst we're on the subject of HR, let me point out that during my 16months with CIQ they have gone through at least 3 HR employees....which should tell you enough about the companies standards if HR is running a mile! The Engineering team in India are so afraid to lose their jobs that they simply cannot speak up or question something if they do not understand, which leads to incorrect work being deployed and are then reprimanded after for causing the mistake. Their jobs were advertised as a “remote first” company but shortly after their jobs started they were informed it was mandatory to come into the office and had to relocate if needed or lose their job. Fantastic culture over there, I felt sorry for them and I hope they wake up and see this is simply not a way to be treated in a workplace. CIQ….should stand for “Careless In Quality” because this is exactly what the work is like. Ship it without any quality control to meet unreasonable deadlines set by Sales who are only interested in their commission rather than the quality of the product for the client, which they will just then blame on Engineering. They inherited systems they simply do not understand or want to take the time to understand so everything is just in utter chaos all of the time. In summary, CommerceIQ is a magnificent display of how not to run a company. It's a marvel that they've managed to avoid self-destruction thus far. If you're seeking a front-row seat to a corporate sideshow, look no further – CommerceIQ is the three-ring circus of incompetence you've been waiting for!
