What is the hiring process like at Granicus?

-wfh reimbursement -remote -not much else

Where do I even begin. Granicus is a “well-known” Government Software company that truly believes in one thing only, money in the pockets of the C-suite while dismantling the workforce in the US and taking advantage of hard workers in countries like Costa Rica, India, and I’m sure many more in the future. The moment they acquired Simpleview things started going sideways. We were first promised extra staff in Costa Rica, which many were excited for. As a manager I knew what this meant. Though we were constantly being reassured about the large number of employees coming in, which we did not need, they continued to pretend we were safe and that layoffs were not imminent. And this is where the unethical behavior comes in, it started with annual employee reviews. Many managers were told and asked to change and falsify employee scores to be much lower than what was given. Once the HR team approved the new low scores, they then let management know that everyone in the bottom 10 percent would require to be written up. Many of us refused to complete the performance improvement plans because they were all based on false scores. Their plan was to give impossible PIPs to these employees then fire them. And how do we know this? Because the heads of HR are kind enough to keep their calendar appointments very public. They had events like “PIPPAPOOLZA”, “Employee Phase Out”, and “Meeting about Simpleview Problem” on their calendars. How embarrassing that a company who PREACHES about professionalism would be so utterly disrespectful about the lives of the workers they employ. I wish this was the end of it but they also failed to give proper notice of 401k Blackout, provide insurance for dental and vision on time then blamed the provider. But after contacting the provider Granicus failed to give them all the employee information on time. It’s a nightmare and will continue to be. My advice: stay away and get out.

-$100/month for work from home expenses -Fully remote company

Get comfortable, this is going to be long. -Granicus looks like a polished company from the outside but it's actually an absolute dumpster fire that everyone should avoid (prospective clients included). Once you're on the inside, you see that it's just a bunch of smaller acquired companies that leadership is trying to squish together long enough to make it to the next PE round, at which point the C suite and many VPs will leave, dumping a mess of acquired companies held together by employees in low-cost geos doing the day-to-day work. -The HR department is horrible. Many HRBPs are extremely unorganized and constantly mix up employees with similar or same last names. Employees frequently appear on the wrong org chart because the HRBP can’t keep departments straight. HR fails to notify employees of acquired companies of the proper 401k blackout dates, even going so far as to tell staff “the letter must have gotten lost in the mail.” When they don’t submit benefit paperwork on time, they prefer to blame the vendor for delaying insurance that should have gone into effect 1/1 rather than owning the mistake. A quick call to the vendor always confirms the issue was on the Granicus side. -Exit interviews are a joke. When asked who reviews the data from the interviews themselves, the info only stays with the HRBP. -A very small portion of the Granicus business requires a FedRAMP certification. For this reason, INSANE IT/security measures are in place for ALL Granicus employees. This limits websites you can visit, tools you can download, etc. For some departments, these restrictions can make it extremely difficult to fulfill client work quickly and efficiently. -Senior leadership is very quick to dismiss poor employee engagement survey results by saying things like “We shouldn’t have included that org during this round” or “That group always responds negatively.” -The CEO has made it very clear that they will do anything and everything the US president requires of them in order to maintain their government contractor status because protecting the business and revenue is their number one priority. The CEO has a weird obsession with Elon Musk, too. -Granicus likes to acquire companies all the time, sometimes more than one in a year. Once the company is acquired, senior leadership dumps it on various teams to integrate aggressively. No time is spent getting to know the acquired company, their clients, or how they do business. They simply take that company and shove it into the Granicus mold as fast as they can, creating disasters every step of the way that the poor lower level managers and their teams have to clean up. -Rather than focus on improving their offerings or improving client experience to then improve profit, Granicus prefers the typical cost-cutting measures including layoffs and offshoring staff to show decent returns to their investors. Offshoring work is probably their most-preferred method and is spearheaded by the CCO who has done this at all the other companies he worked at previously. It’s pretty ironic, considering Granicus works with primarily US-based governments and travel destinations. And then when clients complain about working with someone outside the US, senior leadership laughs and calls them complainers. -Whenever possible they love to contract with employees rather than bringing them on full-time since it’s better for their bottom line and what the investors see. Some staff have been on contracts for years despite being told they would get moved to W2 status soon. -Leadership, and even the company at large, is incredibly disrespectful of people’s time. Meetings are frequently cancelled only for them to get rescheduled with less than a 30 minute notice and you’re expected to drop what you’re doing and attend. An 8am Monday meeting gets scheduled EOD Friday, leaving you to prep over the weekend, only for the meeting to get cancelled 15 minutes before without an apology or acknowledgement of the time you spent prepping. You spend days working on a deck for an SLT meeting, only to never actually get to share it during the meeting because SLT decides a different topic should be the focus of the meeting three minutes into the call. -Talent eval cycles have “suggested ranges for scores.” When it comes down to it, managers are forced to lower scores to comply with the “suggested” range that is actually a requirement, despite being told it was “suggested.” -The CCO changes priorities for his leadership team constantly. One day his people are focusing on one task, and then 5 minutes later he throws another priority their way and they’re expected to drop what they’re doing and shift their focus. -The recruitment team is a joke as they simply look for a warm body rather than quality candidates, or they funnel all their friends through every opening until they get hired. Recruiters’ only KPI is time to hire, again reinforcing the warm body approach. -Employee-submitted questions during all-staff meetings are filtered so senior leadership can control the message at all times.

Remote work Great customers Some stalwarts still holding the place together

No leadership No career growth Massive customer churn No product development Sluggish recruitment and a very US centric attitude towards recruitment High staff turnover Woeful

Absolutely none! The companies that they acquired were great companies that really cared about their customers, their staff and the industries that they were involved in. They strived to be better companies. Since the acquisition, all they care about is charging premium money for aging product developed for an American market. The sales team will do anything to get a sale, including lying about the products capabilities.

American Private equity company that only cares about its shareholders. HR is useless and has no understanding about employment regulations in Australia and New Zealand. Products are dated. Executive are more interested in customer care and growth in America, and so you have to question your integrity everyday when customers are asking for improvements, and the product team just give them lip service. Bi-annually there is a talent scoring process, it is a way to put the bottom 10% on a PIP and sack them, instead of saying that they are laying people off.

Benefits are great, unlimited PTO, unplug day once a quarter, no meetings day once a month, healthcare benefits are really good.

Granicus is a “bottom 10”/“rank and yank”company which means if you are deemed the bottom 10% of performers, regardless of 10 year, any actual unperforming, you are extremely likely to lose your job. Team sizes can be small and there is a lot of favoritism here., In my particular case, I could tell for about six weeks prior to actually being put on a PIP that my boss was building a case against me, it was extremely obvious, even writing me up for things that he mistakenly told me to do incorrectly (many managers have never actually done the job they are managing others to do. That was another challenge.) I never actually got a 30 day review (apparently it was “verbal” ) and the whole thing felt extremely predetermined and unprofessional. If you read through older reviews, you will find ones about seeing “pippapalooza” on HR calendars that they forgot to make private. I read that and cringed, but didn’t realize how real it was. If you’re not your manager’s favorite, just keep your résumé updated, the good news is you’ll get really good severance.

Granicus is unable to attract anyone in any market worldwide with any actual SRE skills because they pay well below the low end of the market rate for SREs. They often cite that it's because they're a government contractor, yet there are folks in the C Suite receiving high salaries and enormous bonuses. They will take anyone who can spell Azure or has heard of SQL as an SRE, often promoting from Support since no external candidates accept their offers. They will take a person of the street, give them an SRE title, then blame them when they can't do the job like a person with 10 years related experience. Any external hire who does have actual SRE skills quits within a couple of months once they realize what a clown show they've joined. As an SRE, you mostly do Tier 3 work as an escalation point for other teams. You're forced to use AI extensively for automations and tools that essentially don't work because you don't actually have any coding skills to check the code the AI wrote. I think they thought they could get people who had no skills and would accept low salaries and have them use AI to do their jobs. It is not going well. The layoffs. My god, the layoffs. Granicus has laid off a large number of people who knew the products and worked hard in favor of outsourcing cheaper labor to make their profits seem larger. This means more escalations for you as an SRE/Tier 3 which translates to less time to do actual SRE work or upskill. They will say no more layoffs while doing more layoffs. The culture declined within days of the 2024 election. The CEO is obsessed with Elon Musk. He got rid of the DEI policies immediately and praised DOGE. Any videos you see on LinkedIn about how great the products are or how they're innovating citizen engagement with governments are false. This company is crumbling from the inside either purging its talent purposely or losing it as people move to better opportunities at companies that are actually great places to work. Everyone is overworked and angry all the time. It's every person for themselves since no one is safe from layoffs and it shows in how people treat each other and knowledge horde in an attempt to protect themselves. Even most managers are out for themselves and will throw direct reports under the bus to protect themselves. My manager openly laughed at us in meetings. He belittled and scolded us like a bad father would a child he thinks isn't measuring up. It's a disgusting atmosphere. I thought the job I had once at a call center where I was made to swindle students and elderly people into getting high interest credit cards was the worst place I'd ever work. I was wrong. It's Granicus.

- Frequent layoffs - low salaries - unrealistic metrics - rude, condescending managers - SRE role is not real - overworked, understaffed - negative culture - excessive reliance on AI

Mission driven, some of the smartest people I’ve had the pleasure of working with. High value on not just doing the work, but doing it well and at high standards.

Leadership started off as seemingly smart and good decision makers. Working at Granicus during COVID was truly inspiring and the CEO did a fantastic job at the helm trying to lead the company through a difficult time. He made the company open and didn’t shy away from the hot button topics. With the new administration, that seems to have done a full 180. He seems afraid to stand up to anything that will even be perceived as stepping on 47’s toes and the company seems intent on hiring people outside the US as cost cutting measures while not understanding domestic candidates understand the government far better. The one thing that has been an issue day 1 as well as the abhorrent pay compared to the same roles at different companies. Management will continue to insist the pay is fine and ignore all evidence to the contrary.

Its a remote first company

1. Worst HR process: a. They call themselves a service company and India HR lead always treats it like a service company and compares to service companies b. The company is always willing to cut cost and not focus on wellbeing of the employee c. The comp policy are not very clear and HR head in India makes policies on the spot d. There is no proper process for Hikes if you are a top performer or a bad performer you get the same hikes(mostly until you twist some arms by threatening to leave) e. The only way of getting good hikes is to resign so that you get compensated for staying 2. Its a Vision less company a. The company does not have a CTO hence no uniformity in tech process. Everyone is running their own show b. The leadership is from small company hence no larger company outlook c. Everyone in leadership is waiting for the company to be sold so that they can get the stocks encased d. The CPO does not have a vision and gets influenced by anyone and takes autocratic decision e. They are just acquiring companies without a vision 3.Very Political a. The India is ready to take away all the good credit and transfer all the setback to individual employees b. I feel there is more politics and less work in the company c. Leadership never know the whole story jus believes in favoritism 4. The flood gates will open soon if they do not mend their ways, most of the people in the organization are searching for jobs