Clutch Reviews

Ever since I started, it increasingly felt as if working at Clutch had a negative impact of employees' mental health given the rumor mill that has taken the place of actual professional company communications, poor personnel and business management, and other various unprofessional practices that have been normalized in this toxic environment. In my time at Clutch, this is how things appeared to me: 1) Alcohol and favoritism - employees come in hungover, often still smelling of alcohol. If you follow this pattern of binge drinking with co-workers, it seems that you can get in with the in-crowd and get promoted by becoming a 'favorite' - this is often what is speculated. Otherwise, you will feel judged, socially a misfit, and your progress at the company will be severely hindered. Not only is this unprofessional and unethical, but it also doesn't demonstrate one of Clutch's claimed "core values" of empathy - for example, if an employee has/had a drinking problem/alcoholism and feels uncomfortable around alcohol, there is no safe space to be found and no sense of empathy or understanding shown by management since there are no company social events without alcohol. With a tap in the kitchen, and employees drinking daily starting at 5 (and sometimes earlier), before the official work day is even over (at 5:30), there is no reprieve from an alcoholic work culture. 2) Poor HR practices, inflexible hours and distrust of employees. The office itself did not have fair labor practices posters until about 9-10 months ago (despite being a 7-8 year old company). 3) Punishing people for wanting a work life balance. Management does not represent a good work life balance either. Highest ranked employees appear to work all hours of the day and night, and on their vacation time. If you don't stay past 6 PM daily, you're considered not engaged and not worthy of taking on new projects or opportunities. If you ask what you can do to improve and gain access to these opportunities, management may bluntly tell you that you need to stay later than 6 PM (even though the working day ends at 5:30). 4) Claiming to hire "all stars." However all employees simply begin doing middle of the road business development and sales work. Misleading title of "Business Analyst" - the role is not at all technical and does not resemble any kind of BA work. The role is purely business development, sales, and account management. The company seems to almost exclusively hire fresh out of college so employees have nothing to measure the terrible management and work environment against. 5) Individuals always seem to be promoted to highest level of incompetence, resulting in management that doesn't appear to have any transferable skills. They seem to lack perspective and people skills. Management often pulls from and manipulates "start-up culture" jargon to attempt to justify management malpractice. They rely on phrases such as "continuous improvement" and vague ideas of "empathy" that do not feel like they're supported by any substantial management practices. Management also does not seem to take responsibility for their decisions or how they might impact their employees/supervisees. They push blame onto their mentees for their own mistakes, rather than showing real leadership. They also often bad-mouth other employees, past and present. In summary: Clutch feels like a toxic work environment and has cliques that contribute to the passive aggressive and opaque communication around the office. If you're a recent grad, put in one or two years to gain some vague business experience if you're interested in business development. Otherwise, stay far away and gain transferable experience elsewhere where you can work with real adults.

I worked for Clutch for two months before quitting; my reason boils down to one thing: it was obvious to me that the CEO and ad-hoc management were just trying to position the company for selling it off. Don't believe me? They would joke about it in the office-place, and the majority of my coworkers were clearly uncomfortable knowing their jobs were always at risk. Although this is a 40-person startup, the CEO is disengaged with 90% of workers. In the two months I worked there, I never had an opportunity to meet him (he was in the office, too, just off in his corner room) and heard about two sentences come out of his mouth. There is basically one general manager who runs the show, and although he's friendly and present, he forgot the point of working at a startup: when I'm surrounded by young 20-somethings, we should not all be at desks from 9 to 5 doing the same thing every day, week after week. The structure is more monotonous and rigid than corporations I've worked for; but it makes sense. The CEO is a Wharton MBA grad, and the general manager comes from an undergraduate business program; both worked for large corporations before starting and running Clutch, and it's obvious that they aren't emotionally intelligent enough - or at least confident enough - to diverge from regressive and un-innovative structures of fortune 500 giants. The honest benefits of working for a startup is the flexible lifestyle, opportunities for responsibility at a young age, and comparitively high levels of cooperation and collaboration with other employees. Every job has monotony, but startups attract talent for the excitement of change and opportunity. Yet, I met employees who had worked there for a year and were still doing the same thing; any suggestion I had got trapped in layers of red tape; and many employees were obviously looking for opportunities to leave (or had already). Don't be fooled like I was - the staff are better PR representatives than young tech innovators. Editorial staff are clearly instructed to fill Glassdoor with language that so clearly matches their own style that its blatantly obvious how planted these things are. The firm will offer free beer and sometimes bring in cupcakes to get employees hyped up, only to then take a picture of a happy workforce soon after, post it on social media, and make it seem like the norm. Heck, management barely even trains you. If you have any hope of building your career in any way, with meaningful experience and strong connections, you are surely looking in the wrong place. Clutch is only good for the one thing I used it for - an in between job that pays the bills while you find something meaningful. - and as an aside, to give an idea of how poor the management is, an intern once sat in the middle of the office and watched Monsters University all the way through. He fell asleep and napped well after his movie was finished. He barely worked the entire day (but surely logged his hours) and left his skateboard (I can't make this up) right on the floor next to him, again, in the middle of the office. But management is so disengaged - and cares so little about the actual health of their team - that this guy wasn't consulted the entire day. Even though every function of Clutch is trackeable online and easily able to be incentivized and track, making coming into the office unnecessary, they still require us to be in the office, whether or not we're actually working. What kind of environment is this? -