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.
