Atlantis (VA) Reviews

3.8

65% would recommend to a friend

(31 total reviews)

Lawson Kuehnert

38% approve of CEO

59% positive business outlook

Atlantis (VA) has an employee rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars, based on 31 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Atlantis (VA) employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Education industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

31 reviews
1.0
4 July 2018

Not a great place to work

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people who work there are friendly but anyone who gets promoted to a manager position gets infected by an unsustainable management philosophy.

Cons

This company recruits freshly graduated college students who have never had any work experience. The recruiting process is itself a glimpse into what it’s like to work there. Your interview will be a grueling 10-12 hours long, generally 7am-7pm, with many unnecessary tests of your work ability. This seems entirely a waste of time for both the company and prospective employee. The prospective employee has to take off an entire day of work just to interview, and I think the company could think of a much less costly way to spend recruiters’ time. If you are offered a position, you must pay for your own work equipment. They will not provide you with a work phone or computer, both of which you will use for 9-10 hours per day while you work there. You also have to pay for your own professional development. The company really wants you to experience a fellowship so you can be a better salesman, but they are unwilling to pay for the cost of your fellowship. You have to work 3-4 people/office, all of which are quite small, while on the phone. It makes for quite a distracting and stifling sense of environment. The culture in the office is all work and no fun, for little pay. You are expected to work for 45+ hours per week. If you do work more than your contracted 45 hours/week, you will not be compensated for it. If you work the minimum 45 hours, you are not considered a “team player.” If you decide not to attend an “after hours” work event, your motives are questioned. Management is poorly organized, unprofessional, and cares only about control. They cannot decide how to compensate the employees, and whether they should treat employees as hourly or salaried. After giving me a slight raise, they took it away and docked my salary a few months later. Throughout the day, the managers keep a hawkish eye on their direct reports, meaning they make sure you are doing work every minute and not wasting time. For instance, if you spend more than 5 minutes saying hi to someone in the office in the morning, you will be called out and told to get back to work. This makes all the employees constantly on edge while tyrant managers get to bully people to do more work. Managers and non-managers alike have to give a minute-by-minute run down of exactly how they spend every hour of every week, justifying the way they spent their time. They will tell you that you’ll have many advancement opportunities, which is entirely untrue. Management decides what you are good at, and you’ll be stuck in that role the whole time. This company prides itself on having a "feedback culture" which is positively false. Your feedback is not taken seriously whatsoever and only 2-3 people in the office make all the decisions. Even if you great ideas for improvement, you will never get credit for them. The minute you signal you will be leaving, they will try and bully you into staying although they will not try and incentivize you in any positive way. Instead, they will threaten that you made a commitment to stay and threaten that they will not be able to provide you with a good recommendation if you leave before your “committed time.” Virginia is an “at will” employment state. You are entirely free to leave when you please.

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Atlantis (VA) Response
7y
Thank you, we do appreciate your feedback. We strive to be a well-run company and we practice freedom & responsibility in the workplace, meaning we may have fewer rules than jumbo organizations, but the individuals here have much higher expectations for responsibility. Responsibility means that we choose actions and behaviors that help our team flourish. In that light, we would like to respond to items highlighted in this review. We are always improving and streamlining our application & interview process. We take this very seriously, as the process is a significant commitment for candidates and for the company's finances and time. We care deeply for our company’s culture and want to protect it by making good hiring decisions. Our holistic process allows us to do this, and allows candidates to make an informed decision about whether they envision themselves enjoying our work and company environment. In May 2018, we moved to a brand new office space, 5X bigger than our last! We have abundant space for group & individual work, including personal workstations for each team member, 20+ meeting rooms of various sizes, a large kitchen with island & cafe style seating, a library for quite work, a spacious balcony for eating or working outside, an in-office workout space, and a common area for large meetings & informal gatherings. Our aim with our office is to create a space that both reflects and promotes our company culture, and can accommodate the rapid growth of our team. Atlantis complies with the Fair Labor Standards Act regarding exempt and nonexempt employees. For exempt and nonexempt employees alike, we compensate fairly with competitive market rate pay. By definition, nonexempt employees work 40 - 45 hours per week and are compensated for all hours worked, and exempt employees are compensated for all hours worked as their salary contracts dictate. Like many companies with flexible work, we do allow our team members to use their personal devices and we even provide a stipend for new hires to purchase a brand new laptop when they start. Yes, team members are often invited to experience our work internationally, and the company covers the full value of the experience for our employees, including a flight stipend & lodging while abroad. We value hard work because often the challenges we face are so big that overcoming them requires exceptional focus and effort. That said, we value performance more than effort. Managers and non-managers alike are expected to perform at exceptionally high levels, and are responsible for managing their time through proven methods of efficiency & productivity. We promote (change title and role) colleagues who (1) are superstars in their current role, and (2) are extraordinary role models of our work philosophy. For example, 4 of our current senior level managers started with Atlantis as Admissions Coordinators. They are exemplary team members and were each individual superstars in that role, and in every role they have been promoted to since then. We eagerly seek out and give feedback (both up and down the org structure) and make concrete efforts to improve based on that feedback. We value our commitments, take them seriously, and expect all team members to do the same. In addition to the (a) exceptional learning potential one has by working here, the other main reason we come to work here is (b) the community: people who are distinctively exceptional, in their drive & intelligence, consistent actions of integrity, honesty, and virtue, and their desire to achieve great things. We sincerely appreciate your hard work as an Atlantis employee, and wish you great success in your future career.
1.0
30 Nov 2018

A Dishonest Company With Poor Culture at the Top

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I worked with several exceptional people in my time at Atlantis. Fortunately, they don't like being kicked around either and all left.

Cons

High stress in the wrong way. They will lie to you to get you in the door. They pretend to have their employees best interest at heart, but that's entirely untrue. All these nice reviews are because management begs those who have drank the Kool-Aid to write glowing reviews. I was mislead as to the nature of the job, hours, level of compensation, opportunities for vertical mobility, and company culture. I could go on, but if you're one of the many talented people they recruit aggressively, please work somewhere else because you're overqualified for this job.

1.0
30 Nov 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

OK salary - but for a very short time position (12 weeks in the summer, 3 weeks ion the winter)

Cons

It's by far the most disorganised and disconnected from the real world management I've ever met in my life. Senior Management is composed by fresh out of college 22-25 year old not the sharpest tool in the box individuals. It was my impression that the hiring process is based on if you know the CEO/founder or some other senior staff somehow. It's a friends' friend type of company. There are no guidelines, no direction, no management - nothing. Management is clueless, they're not even making educated guesses about what they do, they're completely out of their depth. They have no knowledge about Europe's general culture or each country specifics. They assume everything is equal around the 10+ countries they work on. You have to explain them every small decision like they're babies being schooled, it's strenuous to say the least. Everything is done and decided on the last minute or past it, so stress levels are off the chart. E.g.: this summer they had to make a 25% addition to the workforce in one of the countries they operate, in the middle of the programs because they miscalculated how many Site Managers they would need.

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Atlantis (VA) Response
7y
Thank you for sharing feedback about your experience working for Atlantis in Portugal. As a global business, we take great care to understand & operate well in diverse cultures throughout Europe, South America, and elsewhere around the globe. The founder of Atlantis is from Portugal and originally created Atlantis as a student group to help his peers find study abroad opportunities & learn about different cultures from their own. Now in its tenth year of business, Atlantis is an industry leader in international healthcare education and serves countless students, universities, hospitals, healthcare professionals, and public healthcare administrators through a common cause of improving healthcare training and education globally. Our management teams is comprised of exceptional, intelligent team members, with an average GPA of 3.8 and above. They all have consistent, results oriented success in many areas of business, and have lived, studied & worked internationally. We are grateful for our exceptional international & U.S based teams that are extraordinary in their drive & intelligence, consistent actions of integrity, honesty, and virtue, and their desire to achieve great things. As a growing business, we must be adaptable & flexible to the changing needs of our business. The example given is actually a mark of a growing - and most importantly - successful company. We appreciate your work with Atlantis, and wish you success in your future endeavors.
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