Pros
I proudly worked for Granicus for almost a decade and enjoyed every minute of it. Its best assets have always been the people that have worked there. The environment was fast and constantly busy (which I considered a plus). There was never a dull moment and I had the opportunity to meet incredible and talented people in my tenure. The company was acquired in mid 2014 and changes were made almost immediately. Contrary to management accounts, about 90%+ of the SF office was liquidated as the transition from SF to Denver, CO took place. Once the Denver team got started, I had the pleasure of meeting various team members and they were top notch individuals; culturally, it appears as though Granicus will continue with the tradition of hiring dedicated, smart, and fun people. I can't share any sight on how Denver operates or what is good about it because the SF team was pretty much cut out of the loop the moment management made the decision that only a handful would be making the transition to Denver. I can say that the teams built in Denver were a mirror image of the SF office so from a resources perspective, it appears that little has changed; however, >90% of the SMEs are no longer there so I suspect that expert knowledge has been difficult to come by; it is not rocket science so time will give all respective teams the needed knowledge to overcome any challenges that may persist as part of the move. Would I work for Granicus today? Not unless compensation was way much better and I could work remotely (not fond of Denver) in any case, it is time for the next adventure. Would I recommend Granicus? neutral-no; if you are up to the challenge, don't mind mediocre pay, no perks, and love Denver, go for it. Other positives: *Good product vision *Continues to expand its subsidiary portfolio suggesting that bigger things are coming *Great people *Deep pockets so it doesn't look like you'll be out of a job unless they can find a much cheaper place to relocate to ;-) *Great client base
Cons
I cant speak for Denver and the SF challenges are no longer valid since all mid level manages and VPs were canned in the transition. However, I suspect that some operational bad habits have made the move; these include: * Customer Service - as mentioned earlier, the team is great but it lacked the knowledge required to identify many 'out of the box' implementations out in the field. * All teams have new management and only a couple of folks have expert knowledge; I am certain that this would make days and client interactions challenging * Substandard PMO practices can make deployments challenging * Long sales cycles * Questionable Product Management and Q&A practices; as a result, products are constantly eating up resources with fixes instead of innovation * Its competitive advantage is quickly eroding; competitors have more exciting products out in the field. Again, Granicus has made recent acquisitions suggesting that they are looking to offer fresh and perhaps exciting new products in the future. * Poor internal communication from top management to the troops. - This may have changed but during my last 10 months, it was ran like the German Stasi. * Mediocre pay - Definitely not anywhere close to Bay Area salaries but even for Denver, compensation seemed relatively low. *Mediocre benefits *No 401K match but this was the same in SF * No shared vision of what the company planned to do for the upcoming year - This may have changed, if not, sharing the road-map is imperative to keep all troops moving in the same direction.
