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      Coastal

      Engaged employer

      Coastal Reviews

      4.2

      71% would recommend to a friend

      (101 total reviews)
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      Eric Berridge

      Not enough data to show CEO approval

      65% positive business outlook

      Coastal has an employee rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars, based on 101 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Coastal 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

      101 reviews
      1.0
      17 June 2022

      There's no way some of these glowing reviews aren't plants

      Salesforce consultant
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      I just read the review "The consulting company I always dreamed of and never knew existed". There is absolutely no way this review wasn't crafted by someone in human resources to intentionally assuage concerns brought forth in less favorable reviews. "CC is large, but focuses on small teams..." Yes, resources are broken into teams; however, there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to who goes where and oftentimes resources are assigned to projects outside of their team. This is great in theory until you are placed on a project two time zones away are are consistently stuck working in the evenings to support the customer. "We have really low overhead... We track customer revenue by the year the business became a customer..." Does this honestly sound like something a project manager wrote? "CC has an unlimited time off plan..." This is true. It is a plus. I don't take a ton of time off, but I don't have to scrutinize how many hours I'm taking to take my mom to a doctor's appointment, etc. "We do not allow customers to berate or treat project teams terribly." They sure don't, but they DO allow at least one particularly abusive project manager to berate her team. I know several people who have resigned while on her projects, and yet the common denominator still has a job. "Coastal Cloud has an amazingly generous and fantastic bonus program..." I'm sure they do, but nearly everyone on the public sector team was well below half of their utilization goal with some in only single digit percentage. (I will return to this later in the "cons" section.) "The leadership team recently added a new bonus that will pay out in the event of a change in ownership..." Subtext: "We're going to sell again." "I love coming to work every day..." Considering the overwhelming percentage of employees working remotely, this statement supports my theory that this particular review is a plant from someone in leadership.

      Cons

      "Health care benefits are comprehensive but not the cheapest I have seen..." This, as well as the other "cons" listed, comes across as what I would call a "humble pro" - a statement made to sound like a negative but that is actually a positive. Well played. "If you need time off you need to take it, you won't be penalized..." Not officially, but you'll be thrown off projects due to unavailability. I had a significant personal event occur and was out for about two weeks over the course of two months, and received negative feedback about my performance on a task that someone else *volunteered* to do for me. "We intentionally are not rigid or overly structured and that always leaves room for growth..." To say they are not overly structured implies there is any amount of structure in the first place. The level of disorganization here is worse than that of anywhere I've worked in the last 25 years. "My team is actively working to reduce the number of projects that our team works on..." I'm sure you are. This seems more like a direct response to a complaint in another review or two. "If you sit back and wait for work to be handed to you or a process to be explained you may not succeed..." My observation was that junior resources receive very little support and project managers don't want to work with them. Resources post in the bullpen looking for work, and the fish aren't biting. As mentioned in the "pros," work is not abundant on certain teams or for certain roles. Tenured consultants were failing to meet utilization goals despite asking and looking for work. Self motivation and self management was not the issue.

      5.0
      2 June 2022

      The consulting company I always dreamed of and never knew existed

      Senior project manager
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      I have spent the majority of my 18+ year career working in consulting in different industries and technology spaces. Coastal Cloud is hands down the best. Not perfect (no company is) but the best and exactly what I need, want and appreciate at this stage of my career. CC is large, but focuses on small teams comprised of a geographic region or a specialty. For instance the CPQ team or the Mountain West region. These teams are given a lot of autonomy and flexibility to run their team the way they want. This helps make it feel like a smaller start up, yet we are backed by a large team. These teams are typically 20-40 people in size. We have a number of COE's that pull from leadership and all regional/specialty teams. These are really cool. (Examples: Marketing Cloud, Project Management, Data Architecture) These teams work on process improvements, standards, and brainstorm customer solutions. It gives individual people access to skills and knowledge they may not have but want to learn. It helps people in those roles / doing the work to learn more and sharpen skills. To level up if you will. (Granted participating in these groups is totally optional.) We have really low overhead. Very minimal management layers, and lean teams outside of delivery. Additionally we only have 4 offices with the majority of our people working remote. We work with a lot of cool customers across any and all industries. While we work with customers of any size, lately I have seen customers in the upper mid-market / lower enterprise level. Our customers have a really long tenure and generally stick with us for years. We track customer revenue by the year the business became a customer and its super cool to see. Way higher than any other consulting company I have been at. Travel is minimal and completely optional. We have turned down business where the customer wants the team in the office every week for a few days. We are not a sales led organization. Rather the delivery directors in each specialty or regional team are responsible for business development. This is huge, as it ensures a high success rate. No one is selling a project where the team cannot deliver, because the person who sold the deal is responsible for the successful delivery. We are a US Based company and do not have any offshore employees. We do occasionally partner with a nearshore partner but that is very few and far between. CC has an unlimited time off plan that we refer to as responsible time off. It is actually unlimited. As long as you schedule time off responsibility around your project deliverables, you can take as much time off as needed. If you want to take time off for the holidays, take it. If you take a three week vacation and then want to take 4 days off a month later, do it. As long as it doesn't impact your work deliverables or leave your project team in a bind it is fine. Coastal Cloud is in the customer business, we only make money if our customers are happy and satisfied with our work product. That said, employees come first. Employees are not sacrificed for unreasonable customer demands. We do not allow customers to berate or treat project teams terribly. Employees are viewed as individual people and are cared about, we are not just a number on the headcount sheet. Personally I have had a stressful year. Between Covid, some deaths in my extended family, health issues, spouse job change stress, family issues, a fire and more, it has been a lot. All of my project teams have been supportive and helpful. My manager keeps encouraging me to take more time off but I have taken off the time I need for myself and my family. I have also taken time off for vacation. I have never been so well supported and had the latitude to truly take care of me at another company. We have a dedicated Salesforce admin to keeps our org clean and well maintained. I have not seen that at other Salesforce consulting companies I have worked at. Usually it shared by the delivery team and is fairly messy. From a review perspective we have an annual review that occurs the month of your hire date as well as an annual corporate wide performance review where we do peer reviews and get feedback for personal growth and development. We have an annual all hands meeting in Florida where everyone meets in person. It is an awesome mix of business and fun. In addition to business sessions, there is time for a group volunteer activity as well as time to hang out on the beach or at the pool. This is a super fun event. Coastal Cloud has an amazingly generous and fantastic bonus program. 1. We have a quarterly bonus based on billable utilization. It is achievable, the target is less than 40 billable hours a week. This pays out the quarter following the quarter you earn your bonus. IE: Q1 bonus is paid out in Q2. 2. We have an annual profit sharing bonus. This is a super generous bonus that is based on the company profitability and based on your role + the contribution you made to the company. It is NOT a flat dollar amount or percentage of your base salary like a lot of other companies structure an annual bonus. Meaning the more profitable the company is the larger your payout will be. Not a guaranteed bonus but a share in annual profit. This pays out significantly more generously than any other consulting company bonus I have seen. This is paid out twice a year. IE: 2021 bonus is paid out 50% in summer and 50% at the end of 2022. 3. The leadership team recently added a new bonus that will pay out in the event of a change in ownership. Employees will be granted an annual share based on role and contribution to the organization. These will accrue year over year. This will pay out a month after a sale occurs. (Granted I am hoping this doesn't happen for a long time as I want to keep working with Coastal Cloud as it exists today.) This is far and away the BEST bonus structure I have ever seen at a consulting company. Granted it isn't guaranteed and it is based on profitability, but the payouts I have seen absolutely blow my mind compared to bonuses I have received at all other consulting companies. The 2021 profit sharing bonus, which was prorated for the 6 months I was at the company, was more than almost 3 years of bonuses I received at a competing consulting company. To say I was happy with the bonus is an understatement. I cannot say enough good things about Coastal Cloud. We have an awesome team, an awesome culture, and a wonderful leadership team. I love coming to work every day. Some days are really hard, some days aren't. But even on the hard days I am very appreciative for this amazing company and the opportunity to work here.

      Cons

      Health care benefits are comprehensive but not the cheapest I have seen. The company has grown at such an exponential rate, I don't think benefit pricing reductions have kept up. Each year they do change. We are a Google shop and some people don't like that. We use Google Chat instead of Slack and promote Google Meet instead of Zoom for internal meetings. Personally I don’t mind Google, but I do miss Slack. We centralize our technology platforms on Salesforce as much as possible. Which means we don't use Jira to manage our internal work, instead we use a work management system integrated inside of Salesforce. (Some clients have us use their work management system.) I miss Jira a lot. You need to manage your career trajectory and stress level. Consulting is hard work, the difficulty of work and stress level is not different here. What is different is the culture, perks and general awesomeness. If you are approaching burn out no one else may see it but you. If you need time off you need to take it, you won't be penalized. Not everyone is great at setting or holding their own boundaries. If you are not good at that, then you may struggle here. We are still learning, growing, and improving as an organization. We intentionally are not rigid and overly structured and that always leaves room for growth. For some people this can be frustrating and it can make your first few months challenging. There isn't a wrong way to do something (unless you skip building test classes). We don't have a rigid process for every single aspect of our delivery methodology. The Florida team may approach demos, UAT or training differently than our Texas team. While that isn't bad, it can be challenging when you are trying to learn "the Coastal Cloud way" and are trying to do it "right". There is not necessarily one singular right approach and two different directors may have a different methodology. As we are shifting the size of customers our projects and their size are changing. That overlaps with smaller clients/projects already underway. We have some people who are on 5-8 projects of varying size and stage. My team is actively working to reduce the number of projects that our team works on, but it isn't perfect yet. We are still working to find the right balance of being fully utilized on a minimal number of projects. People who are successful at Coastal Cloud are motivated go getters. If you sit back and wait for work to be handed to you or a process to be explained you may not succeed. As an example our onboarding process, while super comprehensive, is largely self executed. If you want you could skip the entire process and have a 2-4 week vacation. (I do not recommend that.) If you need to be micromanaged to accomplish your work, you will struggle with onboarding. But you will also struggle to be successful at Coastal Cloud. We don't micromanage people. For me this is a pro, but for many people this is a con. If you are not motivated, self directed and/or need to be micromanaged, Coastal Cloud is not the place for you.

      2.0
      5 Feb 2021

      Time for Transparency

      Salesforce consultant
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      -Ability to work remotely -Access to the Partner Community and Resources

      Cons

      -Lack of transparency and ownership of accountability -Failure to address issues open and honestly -Inequitable treatment of employees based on who knows who and other demographics -Lack of structure and support

      Viewing 1 - 3 of 101 Reviews
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      Glassdoor has 114 Coastal reviews submitted anonymously by Coastal employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Coastal is right for you.