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      Backbone (CO)

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      Backbone (CO) Reviews

      3.5

      60% would recommend to a friend

      (24 total reviews)
      avatar

      Jeff Fedor

      67% approve of CEO

      52% positive business outlook

      Backbone (CO) has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 24 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Backbone (CO) employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      24 reviews
      2.0
      26 Sept 2018

      Poor Management

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Paid fitness Happy Hours Cool clientele

      Cons

      - On call 24/7 (expect to have your vacations interrupted) - Everything feels disorganized (including job discriptions) - Management are all siblings (no one to discuss other management issues too) - Employees are cliquey - CEO is pompous w/ high need for instant gratification - CEO consistently cancels meetings and wastes other peoples time

      1.0
      11 July 2020

      A perfect case-study on a terribly run startup

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      - On paper, it's a cool concept (that several other startups are already doing) - Opportunity to work with some "cool" brands - Nice coworkers for the most part - Cool city to work from

      Cons

      - Company is insanely wrought with nepotism (leadership team is 90% family and very close friends and the only people to get promoted are these people no matter how valuable another employee might be to the company.) This is not a startup where the best and brightest work - it's where you get a job if you're related to or close buddies with the CEO (therefore this startup is not thriving or destined for startup greatness.) This was a concern of mine when I first joined, though, I went against my better judgement only to be proven that this simply is not good for any company. - CEO and the leadership team lacked demonstrated leadership skills OR the ability to hustle as you would expect in ANY early stage company. It was truly disappointing to see in action. Instagram personas are more important to these "co-founders" than actually working hard. This is evident by the actual promised product being well over 2 years late. (clients left as a result of this.) - CEO does not possess the ability to actively listen to anyone. He lacks general authenticity and or the ability to exercise good judgement in running an early stage startup. It would be nearly impossible to create something great with someone who lacks the vision, judgement, and ultimately the hustle.

      avatar
      Backbone (CO) Response
      5y
      We are certainly sorry that this was your experience and wish you had shared some of these thoughts with us while here. In launching the company, it’s true that Backbone leveraged personal networks for finding talent- as many startups do. Since taking our Series A, we have had the capital and opportunity to broaden our recruiting channels, and our recent hires are experienced execs from external sources with strong technology expertise that complements the current industry-relevant experience our founders bring to the table. These are not ‘friends and family’ hires. We will continue to diversify our recruiting sources as we grow! To some of the other points, thanks for sharing those thoughts. We discussed them among management and believe the root cause is honestly us dropping the ball on clearly communicating how team member responsibilities have shifted as we added execs. Visibility into either a peer or a manager’s workloads have shifted, and - especially in moving to a remote WFH situation over the last 4 months - that has sometimes resulted in a lack of transparency on what team members are working on. That’s something we intend to improve on to address what you’ve noted - providing clarity into each team member and member of managements’ roles and responsibilities so that this doesn’t feel like others aren’t doing work while you are. Thanks for sharing these thoughts with us.
      2.0
      12 Jan 2019

      nice people, no process, toxic leadership

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      for the most part the people were nice, good location, free snacks

      Cons

      Absolutely no process, no communication, and no leadership accountability. leadership had no idea how to properly delegate tasks, manage time or give proper feedback, guidance and training. Being shuffled from one sprint to the next almost without warning, were constantly pulled off of projects halfway through working on them only to be given something totally different, scolded for not following the near non-existent design guidelines and when issues were brought up they were quickly dismissed and nothing changed. Attempts at organizing within our team ended up being pointless due to the aforementioned task hopping. There was no transparency into the design process whatsoever and anything bad or broken was shoved to the side in favor of cheap, empty pep-talks and ignoring how miserable everyone was for having to pick up the work left behind from that attitude. I understand that Backbone is a startup and a lot of the issues can be attributed to a rapidly growing team, juggling multiple tasks and overall just figuring things out, but the way it all was handles and how people got treated during all of that was deeply unfair and unprofessional.

      avatar
      Backbone (CO) Response
      7y
      Thank you very much for your valuable feedback. As a growing startup Backbone is running an agile process across our entire organization, and one that is frankly evolving. This means our deliverables can shift, from client needs to changes in business priorities, which can sometimes add stress to our organization as a whole as well as our respected individual contributors. We realize the startup environment can be messy and isn't for everyone, especially if there has not been a previous process in place. With rapid growth comes the challenges of maintaining integrity across communication channels and projects, and we completely understand that we need to continue to get better. Since last year, we’ve made it a point to have our newly enrolled leadership team attend conferences and meet at regular off-sites in order to give them the necessary tools to function within a high-pace environment while valuing each team member's contributions. We genuinely appreciate your comments and are continuing to work to ensure that we respect the efforts and challenges of each employee. Best, Matthew Klein
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      ReviewsBackbone (CO) reviews

      Glassdoor has 31 Backbone (CO) reviews submitted anonymously by Backbone (CO) employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Backbone (CO) is right for you.