VerticalResponse Reviews

- Upper management is not trustworthy. Ultimately I waited a long time to write this, because I wanted to just move on, and leave this place behind. But upon seeing the high rating that VR has managed to get here, I felt that people seeking jobs deserved a warning of what they're getting into, particularly because many of the reviews here are untrue. A while back Glassdoor was a problem for VR, and the rating here was pretty low. How did they respond? Did they actually make things better? Nope. The company has actively been telling employees, for a long time, to come write positive reviews so that they could get new hires in. Let me say that again: Upper management directed employees to stuff the ballot box with good reviews of VR. Never in writing, mind you. What does that tell you? - Your coworkers will be good people. This makes it very hard to see them continuously mistreated, maligned, ignored, and ultimately made to feel as if they have less potential than they actually do. - Upper management seems to have very little idea what they are doing, or, in some cases, don't seem to care, as if with the recent acquisition they are just counting down to the end of retention bonuses or something. - OFFICE POLITICS. The atmosphere of this company is so toxic it should be quarantined. There is a continuous effort at covering the behinds of upper management and hiding their mistakes that it can even get to the point where an employee is punished for taking initiative and solving a problem affecting customers and revenue, if solving that problem makes the missteps of management visible. This is a problem that comes all the way from the top, as the executive management of the company looks to shift blame for issues downward, it puts middle management in the kind of position where backstabbing and assigning blame to their employees is inevitable. There are also a few people in positions of authority that seem to actually enjoy this sort of politicking, to the point of marginalizing and sabotaging people they see as either some sort of threat or just don't like. - Morale. Oh man, morale. Former employees talk about time at VR the way people talk about time in jail, and when we see our friends who are still there, and hear about the things that are happening, all we can do is feel bad and try to work our own connections to get them out of there. The turnover rate was already bad when I left, and from what I hear has only gotten worse. - Deluxe. A hundred-year-old check printing company bought themselves a software company, and have no real idea, from all appearances, of what to do with it. They said they'd leave the culture alone; they didn't. One of their upper management actually came to VR and told people in a meeting, flat-out, that people working in San Francisco weren't worth their asking price, and that they could get cheaper employees elsewhere (see "morale" above). It's pretty obvious that this is the ultimate plan, as they haven't replaced any of the Customer Service side people who've left, and that team is down to a skeleton crew. My guess is that they're planning to move it somewhere cheaper in the hands of people who don't know the software well, which is sad because the CS team was one of the selling points to the customers. - Low pay. Very few employees seem to be making market rate, and if ever they talk about promoting from within, this is the real reason. It has little to do with developing employees, but instead filling seats while paying less than they could possibly bring in new talent for. The worst part of that is, you might not even know, working there, how badly you're being underpaid. I was shocked at the increase I was able to get when I left, until I spoke to others in the tech industry and discovered how much lower my salary was than it should have been. I'd heard from others who left that they did research on this sort of thing prior to leaving, and they said the same thing. Also, when you bring that up when you leave, they argue with you about it rather than taking it as honest feedback. Which brings me to my final point: - The company seems to be more interested in maintaining a false image than facing reality and changing. This is personified in the way the company handles people leaving. They do their best to keep employees' exit a secret until the last minute, to the point where you might find out a colleague is leaving literally the day before it happens. For those who you did know, it usually was presented like this: "Hey, I just gave two weeks, but don't tell anyone, nobody is supposed to know." That says a lot, in my opinion. My experience in my exit interview was also pretty telling, I think. I was asked why I was leaving, and I told them, and rather than listening and taking note, they basically wanted to argue every point. Why? They weren't going to change my mind, so why waste the opportunity to get actual, unfiltered feedback from someone who doesn't have to hold anything back anymore? I've asked around, this experience is pretty consistent if you criticize things on your way out.