Pros
It’s difficult to pick any real, tangible positives from such a poorly run business, however, some of the people have been incredibly bright, talented and extremely hardworking, though very few still remain. The other positive is that so many of those that have left blur Group (herein referred to simply as ‘blur') have moved on to far superior businesses, both by reputation and career progression, which although tentative, has to be seen as a positive! Finally, whilst I can’t speak for every former colleague who has left the ‘sinking ship’, I know that I will treat my time at blur as a painful learning curve riddled with tough lessons and a poisonous senior management team, teaching me what not to do in business. So, in terms of putting your career in perspective, it is exemplary in helping you realise that compared to working at blur, what you did previously or what awaits in the future, will be far more rewarding.
Cons
Where to start? Well, I’d begin by reading the other negative reviews about blur Group, not just on Glassdoor but on investor forums, and most financial, trading and technology publications. What you’ll discover is that since blur were investigated in early 2014 for ‘cooking the books’, the press, analysts and traders have not had one positive thing to say about the business, and rightly so. It is worth pointing out however, that many of the staff at the time who were aware of how blur reported it’s figures were vehemently against the policy, but anyone who spoke up was immediately ‘let go’ in either a restructure or a pay-off (dependent on seniority). If this is not proof enough then dig a little deeper. A company creates an IPO, releasing shares, allowing the CEO to sell around 1 million shares at a little over 400.00 per share. This figure then goes up to around 733.33 per share before blur Group releases a statement disclosing ‘a change in the way the figures are reported’, which sees the share price drop to 85.00 within 4-5 months. This is a professional term for the FCA are investigating fraudulent behaviour and if blur don’t change their financial reporting policies, the business will be shut down. Since this has occurred the business just goes from bad to worse. For reference, at the time of writing this review, the share price is 25.00. The most painful part of this tedious ritual is the ‘All-hands’ meeting every two weeks, when every employee is spoon-fed utter nonsense by a CEO who sees himself as a visionary or the second-coming of Steve Jobs…..only better. He has built and led 4 start-ups prior to blur Group, each have been a disaster, one even made the top 20 worst ever dotcom businesses (No.11 - Beenz, for anyone who cares), although he has made enough money by selling shares or businesses before investors realise the trouble the company is in. A troubled creative soul? No, a tyrant, addicted to power who deflects from issues with meaningless waffle, ridiculous demands (4 PA’s in 6 months) and forces his employees not only read his ‘Size Zero’ handbook, but forces them to write rave reviews on Amazon! He once claimed that “if you’re not being beaten up, you’re probably not interesting” - PR speak for 'everyone hates us because they’re jealous’. Put in more simple terms, this is simply an egotistical spoilt brat with a god complex who’ll throw his toys out of the pram if you say no to him. As an example of the type of ‘errors’ the company makes, the business was recently ‘hacked’ and lost almost £700,000 because the previous CFO (there have been 5 in my tenure), the new Co-COO (who is also EMEA Head of Sales, despite having no experience in either business operations or sales) and one of the co-founders, signed off on three separate emails from the CEO, demanding they send him money from the business into another account. Only after the 4th email did they think to check if it was the CEO sending these messages. It wasn’t, it was someone trying their luck. No accounts had been hacked, this was simply an email much like the one’s we’ve all received in our spam asking us to transfer money into an account and await untold riches! Instead of admitting to this, new security measures were introduced to prevent blur being hacked again! Not only are senior management slow, dimwitted, rude and arrogant, but even they are too scared of speaking up against the CEO that they jointly lost £700,000 in a just a few hours. Incidentally, the company is making a loss of a similar figure per month, but hopefully they’ll continue making this back through ‘cancellation fees’, ongoing legal disputes and charging businesses and customers for human errors. Whilst stories like this serve as ‘light relief’, it shouldn’t be forgotten how truly awful this business is, both as an employee and a customer. From contacts in the press I understand blur Group is still being investigated by two sources, though for obvious reasons I cannot elaborate, so I’d urge anyone reading this to think long and hard about whether they want to become part of something which has a year to run at best. For the employees reading this, most of you can do far better. Finally, I know that most glass door reviews are negative - we as humans are far more likely to complain than to praise, especially if it means spending time constructing something such as this, however, if nothing else, and you’re considering taking a role at blur Group, please reflect upon the following…..In the last calendar year at blur Group, a company of approximately 65 full-time staff (currently), 79 employees (not including unpaid interns) have left the business. Outside of senior management there are only 3 people who have been there for 2 or more years. This should really tell you everything you need to know. Can this many people all be wrong?
