Civis Analytics Reviews

The organization is a cesspool. It has severe internal problems from bottom to top, and it's a real shame, because Civis' business model has real wings these days. Civis is still alive in spite of itself. The culture and management is dominated by (a) lifelong Democratic operatives for whom the Obama 2012 after-party never ended and who have very little experience with different organizations and (b) vicious careerists who have scant intellectual abilities outside of stepping on smart colleagues and promoting number one. The results are predictable. If didn't work in the Obama re-election campaign, you feel invisible in the lunchroom and, indeed, even at your desk in the distracting open-plan pressure cooker. There were emergency all-hands meetings to announce the firing of Obama groupies and a number of very distastefully ostentatious farewell parties for Obama groupies who had resigned. Non-groupies often left with barely a whimper of acknowledgment. The company decided to be a "product company" or "platform company" but handed day-to-day control of the software and R&D organizations to pointy-haired ladder climbers who either can't code at all or who are among the weakest programmers in the company. Irrelevant make-work for the engineering team routinely resulted in massive product launch delays, and vital revenue-accruing products got buried in a bunch of irrelevant software spinach imposed from above. The functioning part of the organization from the point of view of the bottom line while I was there were the consulting businesses, whose management was characterized by quotes parroted from Glengarry Glen Ross and individual-level public stack ranks of consulting workers in all-staff meetings. Civis' business is quite cyclical due to its involvement with political election cycles, and it was frustrating to see management attempt to camouflage this basic business fact. The unwillingness to be transparent about reality alone makes me pessimistic about Civis. Also, compensation at Civis is poor. I winced when I heard what some of the consultants were making. Really smart young professionals who can do some sophisticated marketing analytics at scale while also traveling, logging long hours, and taking crap from clients were pulling nearly a factor of two less than they'd pull at a big box consulting firm. Compensation on the R&D and engineering sides are somewhat closer to market rates but still noticeably below, especially given the relatively scant startup-style benefits package. All of this has resulted in very high turnover among the best employees and the best managers, including some who verge on irreplaceable due to their technical and domain skills or their efforts to protect their employees from the broader internal turbulence. Especially among those who are not white males: it was inspiring to meet at Civis some of the most impressive salt-of-the-earth corporate women in middle management roles I've seen in my career, and it was depressing to see essentially all of them quit, one by one, and take their talents elsewhere. I only have a handful of anecdotes, but it seems they were underpaid, underappreciated, and passed over for promotions, and it was not hard for them to find greener pastures.

- Poor management. I witnessed some truly shocking displays of managerial ineptitude: client, project, and staff. This is pretty standard at Civis, because while there still are a few good middle managers left, most of the strong leaders took off a long time ago and anyone decent coming in will know not to accept an offer from this place in its current state. - Compensation is very low. Enough said there. - Turnover is extremely high. It's impossible to keep track of how many people left the company in my last year there. A revolving door, as others have stated in their reviews here. - Dan, the CEO, is really bad at his job. His flippant firing of an entire marketing team, and abrupt termination of 10+ employees for attempting to organize with inconsistent and obviously untrue explanations has left staff not trusting him at all. Overall, this company is a mess and very close to having the bottom fall out completely. It would be hard to think of a reason why anyone with the skill necessary to work here in a technical capacity should given what the tech job market is like these days, This used to at least be a decent place to start a career and pick up good practical, applied experience, but that is no longer the case.