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This is Bill Hauser (CEO) writing this response personally. First of all, THANK YOU so much for the review! As you know one of our core values is "radical transparency". Without you speaking up we can't improve. So, thank you!!
And, thank you for calling out the amazing, dedicated, and hard working people you met on EVERY team at this company. I couldn't agree more. We do have truly spectacular people.
If anyone thinks our Glassdoor reviews are from "newer" employees, please scroll through our Glassdoor profile to see the length of tenure for the reviews on our profile. Keep in mind, our company at the time of this writing is only 6 years old.
Regarding the near 0% turnover you mentioned, I am sorry, but it seems you misunderstood what we told you! That statistic is related to the fact that almost nobody QUITS working for our company, due to the amazingness of our culture. This is part of the reason we were rated the 71st best place to work by Fortune magazine last year (through a deep vetting process). I apologize if this was not clear. We NEVER intend to mislead anyone around this amazing stat.
If someone violates our core values, treats their teammates badly, or does something unethical, we DO have to let them go to stand up for our core values (otherwise our values mean nothing).
And, if someone is not performing in their role (and there are no other roles available), we do occasionally have to let people go after months of trying to coach them to improve through our “plan for excellence” process, which I believe is more than fair. When you have an amazing team like we do, we owe it to everyone to make sure everyone is a high-performer (so you LOVE who you get to work with every day, like you said above).
As a company that offers unlimited PTO, I am curious as to how you were working 50-60 hour weeks, as that is not common. Most of our team is quite disciplined about their schedule and is able to finish work at a consistent time daily, so I am curious as to how that occurred.
I am also curious as to how you felt underappreciated by your manager when we are one of the only companies I know who shares team member gratitudes every morning on our daily huddle.
Please email me to explain more regarding the 2 items above. I want to learn the details as this seems unusual and I want to solve it (bill@smbteam.com).
The fact that we hired some AMAZING, experienced team members this year was vital for this phase of our company’s growth. In a professional sports team, the majority of the players on a championship winning team have massive levels of experience.
To go from 100 employees (now) to 500 (next chapter of growth), requires extremely advanced skills, not all of which can be learned in a company that is 1/5th the size of where we’re going.
Many of our team members are grateful for our experienced new hires, since they get to learn from “rocket scientist” level people, which helps our team develop their own skills faster, to better their futures and careers. It’s a lot better than working for someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
In addition, we promoted over 15 people in just the last few months. So, just because we hired some experienced people does not mean we’re also not promoting internally!
Lastly, I’m not sure where you learned this theory that “we’re building quickly in order to sell.” But, it’s not true. Actually, we're looking to BUY companies :).
We were the 641st fastest growing company in America this year, and #729 last year according to INC 5000 because we LOVE what we do and the value we provide. And, because of the results our clients get with our unique mix of services, we believe we MUST get more people signed up with us so they can experience the transformation that we create.
Again, please email me (bill@smbteam.com), with any other thoughts you may have. And, thanks again for sharing!!! - Bill Hauser