A Stunted Start-Up - Anonymous employee Vertive Employee Review

-Salary increases are mediocre. Ask anyone in that office who has ever received one. I understand that as a small company you cannot pay your employees thousands more but some of these percentage increases are insulting. -No opportunity for continued education/learning to stay on top of industry trends or to prepare you for a job outside of the company. If you want to keep top talent you must continue educating them otherwise your company remains stagnant. I believe the one attempt that was made was a do-it-on-your-own-time, online video training which took 5 hours to complete each course. You'll quickly realize that no one would voluntarily dedicate evenings or weekends to this place (even for learning purposes) without minimal compensation. -No one wants to interact with the CEO so striking up the simplest conversation is awkward. He's also notorious for making excuses. His brother, a VP at the company, is a self-proclaimed "thought leader." -Culture. Part of the problem stems from these core values: "make decisions based on data," "be darn clever" (who says that?) and "actively communicate." These are not core values. Try something like "build honest relationships" or "be open-minded and creative" - the current values come across as what employees should do to appease management not what is best for the company or the people. Obviously I'm going to make a decision based on data, I'm not sitting at my desk flipping a coin! Some groups actually enjoy one another's company outside of the office so you'll see big groups go to lunch or head to happy hour and others would rather run for the hills once the day is over. Should you accept an offer at the company, get in there and figure out who likes to go for drinks or dinner once in a while because some people in that office are really great people once you get to know them outside of their roles. -The recruiter (whoever that is nowadays, they've been through a few in the past) has to defend these terrible online reviews in front of potential candidates! There's no way the individual in that role can uphold the core value of honesty when trying to recruit top talent. -Don't bother suggesting all your great ideas because there's either a manager who gets defensive because it wasn't his idea or you might just forget your great ideas because someone is telling you "do this!" all the time rather than "what are your thoughts on this?" -Office location could be better. Ask a current employee about their commute back and forth to work. Luckily, when you do arrive at your desk, there are great big windows to see the hill country...and the traffic. Everyone complains about it but 360 traffic just doesn't move some days even more so than MO-Pac and I-35. -You'll quickly realize that no one in Austin has heard of the site. But they all know RetailMeNot! There's zero presence in the community aside from recruiting events. -If you take a "sick day" people suspect you're out interviewing. Sometimes you're just out sick! -Employees get disgruntled after about 8 months so people become passive aggressive and try to throw colleagues under the bus. In other instances, it is common for someone to CC: every manager in an email to try and make you feel as though your minor mistake is the end of the world.