8y
This is the same ex-employee writing the most recent anonymous reviews. They were let go due to considerable performance issues including bullying other employees and complaints from clients.
I'm sorry this employee found me and the work environment so toxic. We worked hard to support people who struggled with the pace at which we work and the skill level we require. We have high expectations. At the time this person worked at Jumpwire we had 2 HR consultants available, regular employee dinners, one on one career development sessions with me, good team camaraderie, and if someone didn't feel the job was for them I routinely helped them get another job by using my network of contacts.
I did not write any of the positive (or negative ;-)) reviews on this site but I will respond to every one.
We did reduce our employee headcount as I wanted to focus on more part-time specialists rather than full-time generalists and we closed our Canadian office to hire more employees in the California time zone. This has been very successful for us. There are now more than 10 people who work either full time or part time with us and we are looking for more.
Working at Jumpwire is not for everyone. We focus on being the best in the world at what we do. It's a relentless job of trying to keep up with the constant change in social media and it can be exhausting.
I'm not really sure how to respond to "The biggest client fired Gavin because he was abusive to the client's employees" as it is untrue. Here is what happened. We were brought in to an extremely hostile work environment in which the entire social team did not want to change anything they were doing despite not achieving what management expected. We began implementing our Jumpwire Social Media Method to help the team become more efficient and increase engagement. Since we were brought in by management, which had just laid off 25 people, the team was concerned we were coming in to take their jobs despite our repeated presentations to the contrary. The team openly refused to change some of their social media practices and I mentioned to management 3 times in the first 2 weeks that I didn't think we should continue. However, we had successes, for example, the brand had millions of fans on their Facebook page but was too terrified due to legal issues to respond to any of the fans leaving a page full of trolls and brand damaging content. We helped them optimize their Facebook page and put a system in place that allowed them to respond to fans making the brand's positive responses float to the top of the comments as well as banning a few people and thereby increasing their engagement dramatically. In the end, the client's work environment was too toxic and hostile for my team and I. The client's employees were being openly abusive in meetings and working behind our backs to dismantle systems we put in place. The client and I mutually decided to end the contract. There was a positive outcome to this disappointing end. I implemented a new client vetting process that allows us to assess a work environment while working with the client's teams on a small project before undertaking a larger project with them. Breaking down our system into small parts has helped us work with clients who are interested in developing their own social media systems.
Gavin
