Pros
The majority of the people at this company are very friendly, down-to-earth, smart people. Occasional happy hours (during and after work hours). Christmas bonuses. There is a lot freedom in your work and how you develop your position, which is a mixed bag (can lead to unclear expectations and poor communication). Benefits are alright but not on par with companies of similar stature. This is a good place to work if you are brand new to the industry and need something on your resume before moving on. I liked some aspects of working at Glacial and it taught me some pretty good stuff that will help me a lot in future jobs.
Cons
I worked at Glacial for a long time, and the other reviews are not wrong when they say there is a real sense of family there, for those that want in. However, this makes for an awkward environment when trying to voice any big issues or concerns with how the company is run. Things like complaints and even giving your notice are taken extremely personally and cause management to close off at times. I considered not writing this at all, but I think it's important for potential new hires and current management to see it. It's hard to narrow down all of the bad things about working at Glacial, so I'll stick with the big ticket items - the ones that would make me hesitate to recommend this company to anyone whose happiness I care about. I am surprised there are as many good reviews as there are on here - I guess some people are just willing to take this stuff laying down. That or they just aren't paying attention/are afraid to admit there is a problem. Unlike the "great place to work!" reviews, I am going to tell the truth about what really goes on at Glacial on a daily basis. The good reviews on here are suspiciously similar and vague, don't you think? 1. Some management will not have your back during difficult client/partner interactions. There is a serious sense of distrust among managers (including the CEO) and employees. I have witnessed people being thrown under the bus by managers who do not have the full story on what happened, but take the clients side immediately and make others look bad. This not only makes employees feel resentment towards managers, but makes the company look weak and disorganized in front of clients. Just so you know, bending over backwards for every abusive, powerplaying client doesn't make you better at customer service. 2. Employees are forced to deal with verbally abusive clients. I have experienced and witnessed some truly vile clients abuse employees with absolutely zero repercussions. This goes beyond the occasional difficult client. A majority of these abusive clients receive free services/time to try to appease them and/or they just don't pay their bills and get away with it. This only sets the precedent that bad behavior = reward, resulting in low employee morale and even more resentment. It is borderline unethical, just plain not ok. These clients are still working with the company, even after years of abuse. Employees for the most part laugh it off and move on, but regardless, it's really not cool. You can only ignore employee's concerns for so long before you start losing them. 3. There is a "revenue issue", which is the direct result of giving services out for free/charging WAY under market value for services. And I don't mean once in a while, I mean as a rule. It's something Glacial clients have come to expect. Literally hundreds of hours wasted and thousands of dollars lost. This company has hundreds of clients and only 40ish employees. To say the client to employee ratio is unbalanced is an understatement. There is no actual number of clients easily accessible (a spreadsheet with the total client load would be too much organization) but it's somewhere around 500. A 17-year-old agency, who claims to be the leader in ophthalmic digital marketing, is having a revenue problem with a client base of FIVE HUNDRED. I don't think it takes a degree in business to see what the issue is here. Rich doctors (aka Glacial's clients) get free services and amazing deals while Glacial employees struggle to pay their bills because raises would stretch the company too thin. 4. Things often get promised to clients during the sales phase that are just not feasible given employee work loads. Sometimes things get promised that are just plain impossible. This results in angry clients, frustrated and demoralized employees, and the need to give out even more free work to "maintain the client relationship". 5. Protocol for almost everything is non-existent. It seems like Glacial has just barely been skating by on the literal bare minimum of organization and protocol for 17 years. Even when people try to implement protocols within departments, they quickly get brushed aside when the CEO decides he doesn't need to follow them like everyone else. It's extremely hard to do all of this work on improving communication and workflow just to have someone come in and tear it down. To add to this, billing is an absolute mess because there is zero protocol in place. Clients are routinely not billed in time for services, don't pay their bills, and sometimes services just don't get billed at all, period... why is this still an issue? I could go on. However, I think you get the point.