Electric AI Reviews

3.2

48% would recommend to a friend

(185 total reviews)

Ryan Denehy

52% approve of CEO

37% positive business outlook

Electric AI has an employee rating of 3.2 out of 5 stars, based on 185 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Electric AI 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

185 reviews
1.0
19 June 2018

Electric AI: Nope.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Similar to fraternity hazing, or being in the military and going through war, you will make long lasting friendships with the other Electric employees through sharing the same miserable experience.

Cons

This is not a normal startup were there’s a lot of ‘growing pains’ with culture. The CEO, Ryan, is simply out to bankroll as much money as possible at the expense of everyone else, including Electric’s customers and employees. Let’s start with the business idea: Electric AI sounds fascinating at first. You know IT support is broken at companies. But once you’re behind the scenes working at Electric AI, you see customers are quitting left and right and management’s trying their best to hide it, especially from investors. As you learn IT you start to get a creeping feeling that what our service promises is unrealistic and unsustainable, and as an employee you might be associated with a not great service. Then time goes on and you realize it’s actually a horrible service. This place is overdue for a PR mess. Electric sounds great in the sales process but is a total facade in the actual service. Scary enough, the foundation of every modern business is their IT and Electric has the keys to their security. The company is a sitting duck. Its future is potentially a disaster, at the expense of many good startups who have given the keys to Electric because they needed help with IT. Life as an employee: Electric barely manages its own IT. Sales team has had to run to the Apple store for purchases and repairs among various other IT problems. Employee morale is incredibly low. As a result, when investors are scheduled to visit the office, management warns employees that we must be at our desks looking energetic, talking, and looking happy. Don’t get sick, at best it brings unwarranted comments from management. It may be suggested that you should visit a doctor. Or, you may get subtly denied- something like, well you were just on vacation not too long ago. Zero flexibility. 1 minute late to your desk in the morning is late and may prompt an ‘improvement meeting.’ Leaving before 6 pm is a definite no, unless you give them notice ahead of time and it’s only once and awhile. Most people just sit at their desk playing on their phone until 6:30 at least. As a result of everyone’s mandatory hours in the office, sales doesn’t work hard and loudly distracts everyone all day. People will start screaming or playing loud music while someone right next to them is on a call. On the flip side Customer Operations works quietly with miserable, insane hours (all-nighters included). Payroll is a mess and has been late and/or incorrect at times. Final note, if Ryan or Electric AI owes you anything at all, lawyer up. Don’t give two weeks notice when quitting because your payroll can be terminated early. By the time you realize your check is missing money, they know you’ll be out of the office and it will be that much harder to get paid. Just quit the same day you want to be done.

1.0
2 Sept 2018

It’s unfortunate that 0 star reviews aren’t a thing

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I made some great friends at Electric with whom I still keep in touch.

Cons

I was a member of the sales team and was never paid commissions on time. When I first raised the issue, management said it was a clerical error. After waiting a few days per management’s request, commissions had still not been paid. I then brought it to Ryan, the CEO, who diverted the blame to their third party HR resource and basically acted as though it wasn’t an immediate concern. I waited a few more days (again, per management’s request) and received no money and no updates. At this point I called the third party HR resource directly and was informed that there was never a clerical issue and that Electric had never attempted to process my payments. At that point I recognized that management, specifically the CEO, was lying to me. That’s when I started looking elsewhere. Ryan Denehy is, by far, the worst leader I have ever met. He was born on third base and thinks he hit a home run. His perspective seems to be that employees are expendable resources that are pawns in his pump & dump scheme. ...with that being said, Electric does not do what they claim to do in their sales pitch (more on that later). First off, “A.I.” is just a marketing phrase. Electric is nothing more than an outsourced help desk manned by human beings - some of whom are unqualified technically and all of whom are utterly overwhelmed and underpaid compared to the volume of work for which they are responsible on a daily basis. There is no formalized process for security of clients’ devices and no more than a high level understanding of the IT space as a whole. For example, I had to use a loaner laptop for a few days as there was an issue with my company laptop. I was given the former laptop of the CEO of an Electric client. When I opened Chrome, the individual was not logged out of anything. Personal email, company email, proprietary work documents - everything was right there, fully accessible. The management team that implemented the sales pitch (including the CEO) view Electric as some sort of boiler room, with salespeople sitting side-by-side at desks and cold calling prospects all day. The IT space is too complex for this extreme transactional sales style. Meanwhile, the sales team knows very little about IT and has difficulty answering rudimentary questions about the space because training is mostly about straight-line persuasion (a “concept” marketed by convicted felon Jordan Belfort). The sales team is encouraged to blast out multiple vague emails a day, cold call c-suite executives, try to aggressively persuade them to buy a service they know little about, then lie about the actual service’s abilities. The “bro-ish” culture mentioned by previous review is pretty accurate. Expect to work long hours and be randomly distracted by loud music or people discussing sports betting. The employees are provided virtually no perks. When I was working there, a coworker purchased coffee out of pocket to share with the office because Ryan wouldn’t provide anything. After informing him that I was leaving and taking a job elsewhere, Ryan lashed out at me saying I had no integrity for springing the news on him and pseudo-threatened me by saying he has a lot of friends that run other companies. He didn’t pay his employee on time, then lied about it, then accused that employee of lacking integrity. If you couldn’t tell already, I consider working at Electric to be the worst professional experience of my life. I’m thankful that I realized it so quickly and was able to get out and chalk it up to a "learning experience," and move on. That said, I do believe that there are good people involved in this company, including several in management positions. This review is mostly about Ryan Denehy, the CEO. Please keep that in mind. I wrote this after I was contacted on LinkedIn by a prospective hire and hope I can help other job seekers avoid this company.

avatar
Electric AI Response
7y
So sorry you left feeling this way - I remember the issue with your commission check very clearly and would love to elaborate here. When you worked at Electric we were around ~25 employees with minimal back office support, and had just rolled out a new payroll system. The commissions in question got held up for about two weeks due to various problems with the new payroll software and finally (rather than continuing to wait) I cut 17 checks by hand to get everyone paid. I feel terrible that you guys had to wait and since then, we’ve grown substantially (we are 130 employees, occupying a full floor in Soho and have plenty of snacks/coffee unlike the early days) and have a full finance and HR department. This unfortunate incident was unique to your time in our earliest days and hasn’t happened since. If you want help landing a new gig please reach out to me directly - no hard feelings.
1.0
13 Jan 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The best thing about working for this company is finding a new company to work for. I cannot wait until I find a new job so I can quit this God-forsaken hellhole.

Cons

A stressful work environment ravaged with favoritism by management which allows employees who suck up to them to do whatever they want. We are underpaid, overworked, and rarely rewarded with adequate industry-standard bonuses, pay increases, and promotions. Promotions are only given to people who suck up to management despite their qualifications and ability to fulfill the role they are promoted to. Also, the lack of diversity in the Account Management and Sales department further proves that this company has an issue with minority representation. It seems as if you are not white, then you automatically do not meet the criteria to work in that department. The company talks about culture and diversity, but the majority of the management team (and other departments with fewer minority colleagues) are out of touch with the day-to-day reality and struggles of other ethnicities, specifically African Americans. There is a lack of minority representation in executive positions, and higher roles, although the majority of my African American colleagues are the backbone of this company. There is a visible divide in the relationships between certain members of this organization due to ethnicity, and it is apparent that many of them could care less to bridge the gap and end their segregated and close-minded ways. The lack of awareness, as well as proactive measures to rectify this company's identity crisis, is a direct contradiction to one of our core values: "Without change, there is no innovation." This value may be true elsewhere, but it definitely isn't a reflection of this company. Electric doesn't believe in change, and this so-called "core value" should be redefined to reflect management's true intentions and core values: "Without complacency, there is no hope of you lasting at this company"

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Glassdoor has 190 Electric AI reviews submitted anonymously by Electric AI employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Electric AI is right for you.