Pros
Generally, the people in my immediate vicinity make it worth coming into the office sometimes. Workers are very siloed and as with the cons below aren't generally helpful across teams.
Cons
Let’s start with management. To say that Ensighten’s “management” is a joke, would actually be a bit of an understatement and I’m not talking here just about the upper management (V- and C- level). The cascade of incompetence flows down to nearly every level of management since people are promoted into management positions with little or no training or mentorship on exactly how to be a manager. Where communication either from V- and C-level positions, managers, or even among individual contributors is concerned, Ensighten fosters a culture of non-communication. Although modern technological tools such as e-mail and an ever rotating stream of instant message programs are available, staff at all levels fail to communicate even in the simplest of ways. The CEO’s communications are wonky to the point of being unintelligible and he has a gift for spending an hour on a call and providing nothing useful to staff who waste their time listening to him. Managers fail to communicate even the simplest instructions for completing tasks. Staff who are asked for assistance on projects do not respond to requests or, when they do, can be as wonky in their responses as the CEO rendering their “help” useless. Human Resources, pretentiously renamed People Operations, fails at nearly all levels except when it comes to concealing pending layoffs or firing people promptly. They are both unresponsive and unhelpful with requests for help on benefits, payroll, inter-office conflicts, and on and on. As with the rest of the company, they generally fail to respond at all to requests for assistance and when they do respond say things like “I’m working on it for you” perhaps a week, or two, or more after you sent the original request for assistance. It is as if they are devoid of any sense that your request to them might be urgent and needs a timely response. It would be amusing, if it weren’t tragic, that the one department you would expect at any company to be an advocate for employees treats employees as if they don’t matter. Where People Operations excels is in pointlessly responding to posted Glassdoor reviews by “thanking” the person who commented, but with no intention or effort at all of either attempting to correct the provided feedback or passing that feedback along to anyone in a position to effect change at the company. Ensighten routinely and consistently fails to pay contractors and interns in a timely manner. When pressed about payroll they offer platitudes like “The check is in the mail”. This can go on for weeks while contractors and interns struggle to make ends meet and yet they still perform duties expected of them and in many ways exceed those expectations while not getting paid. The company’s litany of in-house developed and acquired products are a jumbled mess that make little sense to the staff. Marketers and product managers alike struggle to explain to staff what the products do, how they relate to one another, how they improve our market position, and so on. Is it a wonder that sales struggles to sell or upsell the products when the message and vision of the company is so poorly articulated and organized? Finally, while the company has made strides in redesigning its products to bring them in line with 1990s standards, the products still look like the early days of the internet and a bit like Frankenstein’s monster. No two products have the same design which makes for a disjointed user experience, but more importantly it is a sign of the lazy programming, poor management, and bad product leadership the company has demonstrated throughout its existence. Engineers and their managers advocate for the lazy, grade school product design even while clients fail to be impressed. If you enjoy a circus of endless frustration and incompetence where your work is not valued or rewarded, then join Ensighten’s team today.
