Follow your gut, read how they post jobs, review their case studies, chat w/ local PDX colleagues before moving forward - Project Manager Fort West Employee Review

1.0
24 Sept 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

If you live near Lake Oswego or West Linn there's an agency near you working on some digital work and you can avoid a commute! Start up environment, growing, one main client for the most part Expanding office (next door) Really smart strategy and hard working design team

Cons

They spend way too much time and money on UX (what year is it?!) They say the word agile yet do not know how to practice it (if they were able to prototype, design and develop within a 2 week sprint they would probably internally combust like the drummers from Spinal Tap). This is also impossible because the main client for the most part is slow and there's a million of them They completely ignore technology and expect to hand off their main clients project off to a newly formed internal tech department with little to no input from tech, a QA team, etc during the design process (Yikes ) They canned several UX leads during UX and digital design hand offs (one actually mentally broke during this time), which completely derailed priorities almost daily. So they don't have a great track record at hiring or providing clear internal expectations via the transparency they claim to have During this time (above) half the PM team also split shortly after an odd meeting to discuss "how they are wired" - see "back alley life" coming up below... They spend weeks on scopes of work with conflicting internal direction that gets buried with terrible and misaligned objectives that was often incorrect from the Client! If you do not live "the back alley life" or whatever that means you will quickly be seen as not a cultural fit and shown the door pretty quickly with little to no warning. Cool that was fun, oh no wait it wasn't the writing was on the wall my first week in what the F was I thinking!?!? They expected PMs to move projects forward with no communication with the Client and minimal communication from Client services on multiple occasions during crucial parts of the projects. Yes, you read that correctly. The main project was broken up into odd scopes with timing not well planned out making it extremely difficult to determine which arm/leg of that project needed to be worked on first (Roadmap what?). It was also really not that clear when anything needed to launch. Sept, no Aug, no Oct, no Q3, check the SOW...wait the scope was poorly written, convoluted, approved by the client and still makes zero sense! They cannot manage the client. For example, they were moving forward on a segment of the main project somehow with no schedule ever created because "the client kept changing priorities..." yet the project was still proceeding with internal reviews and client reviews while basically making up due dates as they moved forward into the abyss. Look, if that is the case you need to pause said project and hold the client and account services team accountable on expectations, clear objectives and proper direction. Moving targets suck and if you can't properly roadmap a project with a client you can't deliver anything ever

Explore other reviews about Fort West

5.0
4 Oct 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good people, doing very smart and quality work. Portfolio has a nice balance of B2B and B2C client work. When the industry struggled over the last two years, the CEO took zero pay in effort to protect the team as long as possible. We still had to do layoffs, but leadership showed real concern and effort to keep the team together.

Cons

In the past, leadership experimented with new ideas, products and services. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but these experiments made the company too broad for it's size, and took away from building depth in our core competencies/services. That said, the company has recentered it's focus has become a lot more efficient.

1
2.0
16 July 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Glad to have gotten paid through a talent agency.

Cons

CEO forgot to mute his microphone to talk trash about my work despite me following the direction of the creative director.

1
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