good - Anonymous employee Takeout Employee Review

A excellent leadership team and a brilliant business model solidifies partnerships with clients. The expert network brings in the best and brightest minds to challenge status quo and offer clients a fresh, cutting edge perspective. Strong values and integrity drive the culture, and the CEO leads by example, something you don't always see. She is humble and kind, and expects the team to act in the same manner, giving credibility to the organization.

Long hours can cause burnout, however that is what consultancies do.

Takeout is a small consultancy that wins projects against big consultancies, but operates like a start-up. It means that we are agile and lean, so from a client perspective it’s interesting, and from a consultant’s perspective it would be too, if it wasn’t such a hot mess.

The company is run by a single leader, and she has many strengths. She’s a great communicator, a great salesperson, and a good strategist, but she’s a really lousy manager: 1. Her expectations of time commitment are unreasonable. We all expect some long nights or a little work on a weekend now and then, but she deliberately understaffs projects and demands both long hours and frequent weekend work, neither of which she will pay extra for. In fact, those on a day rate aren’t allowed to charge for work at weekends. 2. She micromanages. I’ve seen her dictate emails for senior consultants to send to junior clients. She needs everything run through her, and done her way, and this disempowers the very capable people around her, leading to them disengaging from the project and the problem itself, which for a junior consultant to watch is sad. 3. Most importantly, her management style is unkind. She manages people through a mix of passive-aggressive bullying, by encouraging guilt and by punishing anyone that she is unhappy with. I only ever heard her praise someone’s work as a way to shame another, and if you don’t submit to her ways of working she will withhold 20% of your pay for not living up to the company’s values (which include a demand of veganism).