Ouch- - 7/19 Review Is Rough - Chief Strategy Officer Zenda Employee Review

Approachable/Kind CEO, female owned, diverse team, incredible work environment, beautiful studio, advanced technology, "open door" policy for all management, young team, high energy, fast paced, great team building and office activities, opportunity for internal growth, dynamic environment, exceeds clients expectations

Challenging work environment, Zenda is growing rapidly, they are experiencing normal growing pains (schedule changes, extra work/shift in plan/execution, business travel, turnover etc etc) This has pushed people out, departing in less than a year. Management has high expectations of their team, they push you to learn, develop and grow! Challenging you to do better and exceed expectations in the office, for clients, on your work and as part of the team. If you are committed to them they will be committed to you.

You get to work in the Chrysler building

I was recruited for this job through a university that Zenda has a close relationship with. When I received my offer, I received warnings from several professors and alumni who said that Zenda was a shady and abusive workplace. All of their words were correct. Incompetent management Zenda's management is self-interested, passive-aggressive, and old fashioned. There is a huge amount of favoritism where your work won’t be recognized unless the partners like you. Employees are pitted against each other, and often blamed for mistakes made by management. It is not a culture where you can say ‘no’ to management, nor disagree with them. Parasitic business practices When you are on a project, the work is interesting. However, you will most likely spending most of your time groveling your clients for more work. A lot of the work you do at Zenda is not to address a real business need by the client, but more to address Zenda’s need to milk the client out of as much money as possible. I don't know if this is a normal practice in management consulting, but the constant pressure to score the next project makes the work feel dishonest. Very limited benefits At Zenda, you receive 10 days of paid time off, and 3 days of sick leave. You are required to go into the office 5 days a week. You are expected to work long hours, or at least, give off the appearance that you are working long hours to management because they do not trust their employees to get their work done. Shady hiring practices Zenda preys on young, fresh out of college hires who don't know any better. They have a huge turnover rate, and they will burn you out and toss you out when they don't need you anymore. I have observed instances where well-performing employees are replaced by a new hire, only for the replacement to be fired shortly after. I have very little optimism on Zenda's success as a company. The partners have been riding off the coattails of their success from decades ago. There will come a point where the well dries up for them, because their connections are retiring out of the industry, and the tricks they used to win clients don’t work with this new generation of business leaders. They have very outdated ideas on how a company should be run, and this is preventing them from acquiring and retaining talented hires.