Corporate circus falling apart - Associate Arbolus Employee Review

It’s really an exciting and innovative environment with a collaborative work culture. Arbolus is very much team-oriented and supportive which is highly motivating. You are able to work directly with colleagues from different backgrounds and experiences, and everyone is encouraged to share ideas and contribute to the overall success of the company. Because of this you are able to take on new challenges, learn new skills, and take on more responsibility as the company expands.

I suppose there are always going to be some challenges within a fast growing company .. but Arbolus provides a lot of resources and are quick to solve anything that pops up which is awesome

The only real upside was the people (that are no longer there). Strong associate-level team that made an otherwise chaotic environment tolerable, all good leadership was pretty much gone by the summer, leaving crumbs and “yes” people in their place. The culture at that level was genuinely good mostly because everyone was going through the same workload imbalance together. Socials and culture were once a highlight before being gradually stripped back under new leadership priorities.

Honestly this place started running on a completely broken structure once new leadership came in. Multiple layoffs within the span of less than a year due to initiatives that jeopardize quality and service, which resulted in lower revenue for the delivery team - it just turned into a cycle, no criticism allowed though. Associates were basically doing the full revenue generation and execution work certain(!) “account managers / team leads” were taking credit, because senior leadership never had a consistent or transparent way of actually measuring who was doing what or how success was defined. It ended up feeling like the people doing the actual work were also the ones carrying the entire number, while everything above that layer controlled how the story got told. There was no real standardization in how performance was tracked or communicated. Depending on who was reporting or how things were being framed, the same output could look completely different on paper. On the ground level, it often felt like workload and responsibility weren’t aligned at all with authority or accountability. And just for the record - scrutiny on associates was constant, while other layers of the org above them could basically disappear during work hours or be seen shopping online and leaving early daily while scrutinizing associates to “respond to emails right away”, and be available after hours. Multiple associates were given positive reviews by management, just to then be axed as senior leadership would somehow be told a a completely different story by said management. Looking busy and rushed can lead to great achievements when you know you aren’t really being measured by anything, and you can always shift blame to subordinates, am I right! A lot of the original upside of the job (good coworkers, culture, socials) slowly got stripped away over time with leadership changes, leaving “yes” people who have no clue about economics of the space or even internal processes if you ask them, they’re just the cheapest to retain so the company at least has some presence in the commercial aspect (not like senior leadership checks actual performance anyway). The offshoring to Costa Rica also pretty much signals where things are going, less focus on depth and client experience, more focus on cutting cost wherever possible. That might work on a spreadsheet, but it’s not exactly aligned with what PE / institutional clients think they’re buying in an expert network model, especially when stronger and more sophisticated players like AlphaSights and GLG exist and they’re focusing on quality of service above all (and don’t fabricate and inflate numbers or data during client presentations, I presume). Overall it just feels like a company trying to position itself as a premium service while it has completely eroded the internal structure.