I had so many “experiences” at Innovative, I struggled to decide which ones to include here. It was tough: Imagine a company culture that is so adversarial, gossipy and emotionally immature that it feels more like a TV show high school, complete with a clique headed by an executive who ensures anyone she dislikes is soon gone. Imagine leaders are so unbelievably unprofessional that they admit to occasionally missing whole meetings because they regularly take naps during the day, show up to video conference calls with their team in a bathrobe, and repeatedly forget the purpose of meetings they called. Imagine they tell you other team members’ salaries, and regularly mention which one of their direct reports they “wish they could fire”. Imagine a culture where everyone company-wide, ruthlessly talks behind one another’s backs (even trashing their OWN direct reports to other departments – yes, you read that right) and where cross-functional collaboration is not valued at all. Imagine working with product teams so deeply flawed that they don’t take responsibility for anything, consistently miss deadlines, completely “ghost” on projects, operate as if they exist in a vacuum, not partnering with anyone and not caring to partner with anyone. Worst of all, I once sat in a meeting attended by several members of the Executive Management Team. The subject of Innovative’s low Glassdoor rating came up. (I had previously heard buzz about a pending “Glassdoor campaign”, so personally I’m skeptical of reviews left after May 2019. Actually, I’m skeptical of any 5-star review of iii, or reviews that say "no cons". That’s not to say it’s impossible for a person to have a good experience here. It certainly is, especially in entry-level roles. It’s just highly unlikely that in a company so small, you would have NO awareness that there’s a culture problem and have not been touched by it at all.) When the subject came up, the mood in the room immediately got more lighthearted and “jokey”. Officers and VPs began dismissing specific reviews and ridiculing those reviewers as being out of touch, or otherwise missing the mark in their reviews. I was taken aback at how lowbrow and petty a conversation it was for industry leaders to be engaged in. They had a big laugh about the whole thing, including the CEO. After a round-robin discussing which bad review was whose “favorite”, it was clear to me that in their opinion, the low Glassdoor rating is due solely to former employees being unjustly bitter, maladjusted to M&A consequences or highly misinformed, and not due to any Innovative culture shortcomings whatsoever. I mean, this was it; it doesn't get any higher...these were the MOST senior people in the company. They appeared to have absolutely NO PLAN to address the culture at Innovative in order to keep passionate librarians and other expert professionals from leaving the company, and thereby leaving huge knowledge gaps in the process of innovating. They didn’t seem to feel like it was important. They had read EVERY review. And they thought it was funny. I began a job search the next week.
