62% positive business outlook
Pros
Smart co-workers with a lot of camaraderie, great communication inside and outside departments, good benefits package and pay is commensurate with experience. It's been a great first few weeks and I'm happy that I joined!
Cons
For an Agile workshop, things feel slow sometimes... but that can enable you to speak up for your projects and make things happen.
Pros
Great benefits, vacation, sick time, and company holiday.
Cons
No upward movement, constant change, poor team-to-team communication, no problem-solving, layoffs, poor salaries
Pros
Invoca is an leading company in an emerging category, with incredible growth potential. There are several strong pros to the Invoca experience. First, you get to be a part of creating and growing a company. With that, YOU get to develop technologies, or develop process, or define how Invoca moves forward. Also, the start up experience offers a lot of benefit to your professional development, and makes you very marketable. In addition, Invoca is a fun place with great people. Yes, we have lots of perks (food, events, swag, etc), but what is important is that the people here enjoy working together and foster a collaborative environment. Lastly, Invoca pays well, and offers stock options - that doesn't happen often! I almost forgot - Invoca is located in downtown Santa Barbara!
Cons
As with any company, there are some challenges. You need to be adaptable, and able to adjust to change. The company changes often and fast. Take advantage of it, and find out how to be a part of it. Also, communication can be challenging, especially as the company grows outside of Santa Barbara.
Pros
- good work life and benefits. Good pay.
Cons
not a ton of training or direction to help new hires. Its very much a learn as you go and we need you to ramp by yourself. VERY remote company which can lead to communication issues.
Pros
Invoca puts out a top-tier software product and continues to innovate in its market segment. The culture is great and there is tremendous opportunity to learn from the best. After a rocky period in 2016 where the CEO and executive team were not executing well, we got a new CEO, a new VP of Sales, and promoted a new VP of Marketing from within. They are all excellent! They have ushered in a new era of communication, transparency, and excitement. It’s great to see how strong the lines of communication have become across departments over the course of 2017. The product vision is clear, the market opportunity is huge, and the entire company has really hit its stride. Awesome things management has done over the course of 2017 to make Invoca a great place to work: * New quarterly feedback mechanism from employees to management. Scores are shared at the company-wide meetings. Feedback is not just addressed, but acted on. * They brought in a consulting firm that specializes in career track development within companies. That firm did analysis and gave plans of action to managers, and also met with employees to get feedback and give advice. Nicely done. * They brought in speakers to address important topics like gender equality in the workplace. * They brought in speakers to address out-of-work topics like “how to buy a home”. * They implemented new processes to align company departments to the same goals with lots of cross-team brainstorming. Nicely done. Management Accessibility: * I feel I can walk into my manager’s office at any time and discuss any kind of concern or issue with him. * I feel I can message our CEO anytime and discuss ideas, brainstorm, and so forth. Cross Team Communication: * In the past month, I’ve had both 1:1 and large group discussions and sessions with every other department at Invoca. And I’m in engineering, which at a lot of tech companies, can be pretty insular. Clearly, not an issue here. Most of these meetings were focused on the customer: how to build the best features for them, how to educate them on how to get the most out of the product, and how innovative new features are making their lives better. Excellent Culture: * In the last month, I’ve done all of the following with fellow Invocans: - Ping Pong - Beer Pong - Jam Sessions - Lawn Bowling * And prior to that - Ultimate Frisbee on the beach - Landshark parties - Moscow Mule parties - Rooftop BBQ’s - Invoca Holiday Cider We work hard but we know how to have a good time too!
Cons
The market we serve has a certain inherent complexity to it - enterprise customers need integration and optimization across multiple marketing channels and their marketing technology stack. Invoca excels at providing this, but it also means that as an employee, you need to feel comfortable navigating a certain amount of complexity so that you can communicate well with the customer and/or build a product that meets their needs.
Pros
Great work life balance Very solid benefits, health insurance, etc. The CEO is a great man. Very interpersonal, no bs. Very customer centric as well, much of his time is spent meeting with customers. His head’s not in outer space, he’s a very much dialed-in CEO.
Cons
Culture: People on glassdoor say that Invoca has great culture but I argue that there almost is no culture. 95% of communication with your coworkers will be over slack. The rest over zoom. The chances of meeting any of your colleagues in person is slim to none. There is a famous quote "Culture eats strategy for breakfast" which Invoca could learn from. The company is a bunch of siloed departments that hate interacting with each other. In my opinion, the elimination of offices as a cost saving measure will only negatively impact the success of the company. Culture is a subjective topic, but to me it’s more than zoom meetings and ERG's. Slow growth: Invoca had made the recent milestone of attaining 100 million in annual recurring revenue. Something very impressive for a growing SAAS company. Unfortunately since the point though, it seems the growth has stagnated. Costs had to be cut in 2023 and some layoffs occurred as the company acknowledged their biggest expense is payroll. Customer churn is high which means that new bookings are an essential to keep revenue afloat. I believe their biggest hinder to growth is excessive hiring and an over-hierarchical org. A person gets manager thrown in their title, a junior person is hired. Teams are grown and grown with overlapping roles and skills I don’t understand why half of them were hired. You have to ping multiple people to get something done when realistically one person can just take on that amount of responsibility. I mentioned work life balance is great here and that’s because they’ve hired too many people. Everyone on a team covers something very specific and it ultimately makes initiatives longer to complete, not the opposite. This is a great place to work and become complacent. When I joined, I was impressed by all the long tenure employees who’ve worked here for over 10 years. Now I more so believe they’re just comfortable. If you live in a LCOL area, you’ll have it made here. Everyone's a winner and no one gets laid off (except for sales people). Everyone just loves to pat each other on the back after they did the smallest effort of work ever. Make sure you log that positive feedback in lattice, how else will it get noticed? I truly wish this company the best. I hope you break even by the end of the year. I have no hard feelings, this is all just mere feedback.
Pros
Decent pay and decent people
Cons
Poor communication and interesting management choices
Pros
This is an outstanding company. Great culture that starts at the top with terrific leadership. It's an incredibly positive sign that many, many people in the company have been here for several years. But they still demonstrate the passion and energy of a start up. Customers love us, and are always willing to support us in any way we ask. Communication is strong across the company, with complete transparency during our monthly all hands meetings and weekly video messages from the CEO. The teams work together well and are truly trying to solve big problems together.
Cons
As a fully remote company, it would be great to have more opportunities to get together in person.
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