Overworked. Vastly Underpaid. Culture Void. Behavior rots at Head. - Senior Project Manager Downstream Employee Review

1.0
Sep 15, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1/ Thankfully recently acquired by much larger and more successful company. (CEO 'managed' books and value for tax purposes previously - but at least with new Owners, expectations will ensure better scrutiny, for everyone). When does tax minimisation become tax avoidance is an interesting open question for Monte Carlo..., Amsterdam..., R&D...?) 2/ Culture of Unispace is infinitely better & welcome. 3/ Local culture at DS prevailed, and each country local DS culture was created, enjoyed, embraced - until global got involved. (Every studio had its awesome vibe, despite - not because, of global leadership. Generally, smart people thrived on this, but then saw bigger picture and left. DS has a ridiculously high turnover in EVERY country it operates - the CEO cannot hide from this on his watch, but still maintains TEFLON stance - most, if not all leaver-comments, come back to global PDX management as to why they are leaving. Outdated misogynistic ethos and conservative employee-hostile policies & behaviors - just look at gender balance in management and across the company.

Cons

1/ CEO - complete lack of regular, authentic, global team communication, leadership, culture. 2/ Massive turnover globally, every office under his watch. He has nowhere to hide. 2/ CEO who pretends to also be COO, but is incompetent at both roles as frankly only understands sports, holidays, coaching during business hours, and dinners. 3/ Zero regular communications, cultural tenets or policy consistency. 4/ If you are family of CEO you are on payroll. Do nothing of value. 5/ No regular consistent process for anything, just what CEO is interested in, most likely to finance his next folly. 6/ Great people in every department, that are hamstrung to do great work, by CEO micro-management to literally approve any and every decision - autonomy does not exist and budgets that are laughable. But family travel is often on the books. 7/ The CEO is teflon. He doesn't care about people or employees, he cares about his takeaway bank balance and nepotism. Not once in my tenure did i observe him accept responsibility for anything - despite being the actual decision maker in everything. In essence, one would make a range of recommendations, he would select. But he was never interested in outcome, just teflon blame. 8/ Always screwed money-wise: underpaid from the start - well below market value; no regular reviews; no regular promotions; inclusion entitlements seen as normal by most companies, considered 'benefit' by CEO, and reduce value of overall package.

Explore other reviews about Downstream

5.0
Jun 4, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

DS does really cool projects and employs passionate people! There's a great collaborative environment and my management respects work/life balance.

Cons

Since being acquired by a larger company a few years ago, some workflows take more time due to extra steps put in place for approvals and systems.

2.0
Apr 7, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

free food, interesting projects, some nice people

Cons

-no wage adjustment in ~2 years -no career growth in ~2 years(despite trying) -very little collaboration and really bad communication when it does happen. shockingly bad communication from a lot of people who have been writing code for a long time. likely due to the "good enough" attitude here. they really dont care about doing things right. -they have not added a single seat to our team in the two year ive been here. the team is drowning in work. -paid under market for my work -middle management makes technical decisions they are totally unequipped to make -excessive technical debt while building a new product with a skeleton crew.

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