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Digi International

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Top-Down Directives by an Uninformed, Ineffective CEO - Anonymous employee Digi International Employee Review

1.0
15 Apr 2021
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

People are hardworking and mostly kind. People in my department were always willing to help when they were able, even if it meant going outside swimlanes and over bandwidth. Direct managers care about their employees, even if some (not all) of their attitudes about work and progress were misguided.

Cons

I worked for SmartSense, a subsidiary of Digi based in Boston, MA. Since they were acquired 4 years ago, the CEO (Ron) has visited Boston maybe 3 times, tops. He was only ever interested in the most superficial snapshots, without any real understanding of the business model, the actual products, or the structure of the company. However, Ron makes it his business to direct all of SmartSense's priorities despite having only a cursory understanding of SaaS as a business model (he's much more comfortable in the transactional world of selling widgets and dongles). It was always painfully obvious that he had difficulty answering questions about SmartSense when it came to company forums, or even when speaking specifically to SmartSense staff. I'd bet good money that Ron has never physically handled a single product sold by SmartSense. That being said, Ron is happy to make unilateral decisions about the company's goals and even LIES to the board about the progress of current objectives (read: new software parity). His disconnection from the red-headed stepchild subsidiary SmartSense is toxic and makes him a poor custodian of the company's future. Ron has also been conspicuously mute about HR issues brought to his attention by the HR department, by employees, and by other leadership members. Sexual harassment accusations go completely ignored if not actually rebuffed. Issues local to the Digi Headquarters in Minnesota (re: George Floyd, BLM protests) went virtually unaddressed, even when employees have urged and pleaded for some kind of statement (too "political" for Digi, Ron says). Other social issues Ron has refused to address include the violence against the Asian community (even when directly asked for a response by one of our many Asian employees), and pronouns in email signatures (even though this is becoming the norm in many publicly-traded companies, Ron and our legal council have advised that our signatures are somehow part of the Digi brand--didn't realize you could own someone's name and identity as part of a brand...). Ron may be effective as a leader of Digi proper, as a traditionally conservative company that enjoyed most of its greatest success in the 1980s, but he is wildly tone-deaf as a leader of a software/hardware subsidiary and his disdain and lack of interest in involvement is disheartening. Some examples of standard-fare issues with SmartSense that any tech company would have fixed by now: No product owners in hardware; product owners in software have zero actual product background; no UI/UX personnel or even consulting. I could go on and on about the issues this company is facing and will continue to face. Suffice to say, the rot goes to the bone. Other common complaints amongst SmartSense staff: unclear expectations, constantly shifting priorities, reliance on man-power over engineered solutions, long lead times on bug-fixes or feature releases, ineffective engineering team who are not held to ANY standard or hard deadlines. If you show initiative and competency, they will overwork you to the bone rather than raise the standard for anyone else.

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Pros

Smart, passionate people open to hybrid

Cons

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Pros

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Cons

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