Pariveda Reviews

Salaries are not competitive anymore, and in VHCOL areas it's not at all for the amount of time and effort you're expected to put in at this firm. The feedback culture is very one-sided and manipulative. What once seemed like thoughtful growth opportunities now seems like they just pick at your weaknesses until you become fully dependent on their validation for your self-confidence. It's expected of you to go above and beyond your 40 billable hours and work on things for the betterment of the firm. Which I don't mind as much when I get to work on initiatives I'm passionate about, however it can get annoying when a new initiative for the office is created and it becomes an expectation of everyone to fulfill the new requirements regardless of your client obligations and whatever else you were already committed to. During the pandemic, Pariveda's smoke and mirrors disappeared and everyone got to see the firm for what it really is. A top-heavy, small business that was struggling to sell work. The company was so ill-prepared for an economic downturn that they cut salaries as soon the the pandemic got real. While it sucked, we accepted the sacrifice if it meant none our colleagues, friends even, would lose their jobs. This was especially difficult on employees in VHCOL cities as the salaries there already aren't competitive with the local market, to take a 15%-20% pay cut on top of that and tell everyone to work even harder to sell more work is criminal. Oh, and then we get an email on a Monday saying that people have been let go... after all the sacrifices we made. Transparency went out the window. For a company that loves to talk about how they only hire top talent, way to through them to the wolves as soon as times get rough. Many teams were forced to scramble to take over their ex-colleagues roles and also figure out how to explain to the client why someone they had a trusted relationship with just disappeared. Fast-forward to now, I wince every time I see an update showing the company is in the green and that they are hiring at every level because we have so much work now (to the point we are over-booked) proving that no one needed to be let go in the first place. I joined Pariveda because I was looking for a company that valued it's employees and would allow me to work on project that were meaningful to my growth instead of being thrown on anything just to keep me billable. And for a while it felt like everything they promised was true. However, the way leadership handled the pandemic really broke a lot of employees trusts and faith in the company's leadership.

Small business that couldn’t survive the pandemic - financially, emotionally, morally, structurally. Pre-Covid leadership/recruiters touted the firm was built to be resilient, to be adaptive and was employee/people centric. The founder, Bruce, preaches starting in October 2003, he established the firm with his own money "during the worst IT recession in history" and continued proclaiming "he created a company based on the idea that talent can be differentiating". Anyone that has been a consultant knows that this unexceptional proclamation is what every consulting firm says and tries to believe/live. So the idea was far from novel or differentiated in any way. Bruce goes on to explain that his firm was built upon "a unique but sustainable business model based on talent development". Being a former recruit that was broken by prior firms travel intense, large scale operations - I was gullibly drawn to the decentralized, local consulting model and the hope that Bruce’s vision was more novel than the obligatory, obvious consulting mission of talent focus. Similar to a cult, Pariveda leadership will quickly assess how much you believe in their culture, their mission and if you don’t conform and quickly become a conformist believer, you will find yourself in the outside looking in - given one more chance to confirm to the firms belief system before being forced out. That begins with conforming to become vulnerable, humble, servant leader - focused on talent development. Sounds great! It turns out, that vulnerability will be used against you to tear you down, eventually break you into doubting yourself and in turn only trust the firm for self-worth and acceptance. This engineered lust for self-worth and acceptance is the secrete sauce of Pariveda and is why the firm is built on the same principles of a cult. No more differentiated than Scientology - in fact very similar in form and substance. Get out while you can and if you are thinking of joining - I hope you read this and reconsider. Believe that you can do better. Believe in yourself. The "sustainable business model" Bruce built crumbled almost instantly during the pandemic of 2020. In April, Bruce delayed leaderships paychecks by two weeks to help offset a pre-pandemic balance sheet that was in the red, running on a revolving credit line. Weeks later slashed everyone’s salary by 20% and sr. leaderships salary by even more. The firm "built on talent development" broke its people by slashing their salaries and breaking an already broken workforce struggling to cope with the personal impact the virus had on all Americans and decided to work their employees to the ground - exclaiming we had to work harder and sell more work in order to save our jobs and our teams jobs. Everyday you heard "what are you doing to save jobs". This went on for months and then they started cutting jobs, despite all our hard work (our supposed higher calling to ‘save jobs’) creating a strong sales pipeline in the middle of the economy showing signs of recovery (October 2020). After cutting jobs (arbitrarily kicking a significant percentage of its ‘talent’ to the curb) Bruce proclaimed that they would restore salaries (maybe) early 2021 and would partially repay wages. What a disaster - many who were not broken conformist, manipulated into believing the firm was acting based on the greater good; those that even somewhat believed in themselves - exited the firm in masses. Including me. Now they are supposedly, aggressively hiring - makes sense. Sounds sustainable and resilient - ha.