Sav Reviews

2.5

29% would recommend to a friend

(45 total reviews)
avatar

Anthos Chrysanthou

33% approve of CEO

31% positive business outlook

Sav has an employee rating of 2.5 out of 5 stars, based on 45 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Sav employee rating is 35% below average for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

45 reviews
1.0
4 Feb 2017

Only if you're desperate, gather some experience and gtfo.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Interesting product, free lunch/snacks, 401(k)

Cons

I'm going to try my best to leave opinion out of this as much as possible. - There are cameras pointed at almost every workspace. - Verbal and/or written reprimands for being less than 60 seconds late. - They will take the opportunity to read through and scrutinize your Google chats and Slack messages. - No flexible hours. - No work from home opportunities unless it's to push you to get something done on top of your regular 8:30 – 5. - Accused of interviewing elsewhere when requesting to leave 90 minutes early on a Friday for a relative's wedding. - No compensation for overtime. - Refused to compensate a translator even a few dollars to do some quality checking of the translated content of our own site. - Employees eating lunch at their desks is a common sight. - Criticized for leaving at 5:01 and not working through lunch when the CEO made one of his infrequent trips to the office. - Constantly questioned about whether 8 hours worth of work was done in a day or 40 in a week. - Verbal reprimands for getting coffee from the kitchen after the morning meeting instead of before. - A bug was discovered in production one time that had affected some orders. Before the bug could be properly investigated, the CTO had circulated an email to the entire office claiming the bug had been in production for over a month and our API had an issue and gone down. After researching the bug by more thoroughly checking commit logs and database entries, I determined it had been in production for a week, was not caused by an API issue, and the API had never gone down. After replying with my analysis, explanation, and evidence, the CTO demanded I reply back retracting my findings and support his version, presumably because they made him look bad in front of the CEO and all the other employees. - Turnover was well over 100% during my tenure there. - Salary is considerably less than market value. - The CTO referred to designers and app developers as “divas” during a long drought in being able to hire either. I presume it was because the applicants weren't desperate enough to accept management's lowball offers. - Much of the development has begun being outsourced overseas. - Translator relations are mostly an afterthought. - If you're female, expect to also perform reception duties despite whatever your actual job title is. - The CTO and CEO tried to throw a salesperson under the bus with termination for halted productivity during the major east coast DNS outage of October 2016. - I was once told to get back to work while researching something on Stack Exchange. - The CTO once tried telling me “no one's ever here past 5:15”, the day after several employees were there working well past 5:15. - Doing pretty much anything but typing into a code editor (as a developer) is seen as either a waste of time or not real work. - Lower level employees were encouraged to take a couple of company culture surveys which they claimed were anonymous. After writing in the survey that claim was preposterous, I was called in for a meeting with the CEO. Thank you for proving my point. - The culture could be described in one of two ways: All the excitement and stiffness of a dead body with rigor mortis, or non-existent.

1.0
22 July 2016

This Place is the WORST

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The work day ends at 5, so in theory, you're not there all day. They'll tell you they get Whole Foods catered or "Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner" but it's random snacks from Instacart that you don't even get to provide input that you like so you have to go with whatever is ordered for you...

Cons

-Absolutely no trust in their employees. Cameras everywhere, computers monitored, etc. If you're not at your desk, you'll frequently be asked what you're doing at that EXACT moment. They'll explain this away as a start-up environment but this workplace is legitimately abusive. They treat their employees terribly, hence the reason that NOBODY stays more than a year. -Dishonest interviews/contracts. Emerge constantly promises things for employees that they have no intention of delivering. I recently came across an Indeed post for a job here that promised a 22,000 book library? HA. A gameroom that has ping pong, wii, and darts? Not that anyone ever gets to use- you're essentially chained to your desk. They'll promise you commission that you can't make, or commission agreements that actually rely on someone else to finish a sale, so it's not even like you can control the money you make. You can set up a million shots, but if your shooter doesn't close, then you've still scored 0 points. -Food is terrible. Whoever shops for it has the taste of a stoned highschooler: pop tarts, beef jerky, etc. - You're expected to make upwards of 200 calls a day. Don't be fooled, this might be a small office, but Emerge Media is a glorified call center. -Management has no idea what they're doing. I suppose everyone has to start a leadership position somewhere, but the inexperience at Emerge is palpable. Since the C-level has no idea how to manage, they impress a dictatorship over the other employees (there is no mid level management -- oh look, another con!) Meetings are scheduled for essentially no legitimate reason, thus barring an employee from making their phone calls, which then, they get blamed for. -Appearance of a "collaborative workplace." Emerge did indeed administer a QA/Employee Survey in March. I'm pretty sure they didn't look at the results/did nothing with them/didn't care. They talk quite the talk during the interview, but walk NONE of the walk. Don't be fooled. -Terrible environment to be female. You are routinely asked to order food (but not allowed to be the decision maker,) go get cupcakes for birthdays, clean the kitchen. The whole tone of the office is one that feels like "the good old boys club." I am routinely talked down to just because I am a girl. If you're looking for work place equality...look elsewhere. -Outsourced HR. There is essentially no form of HR here, unless management wants to reprimand you and then they call someone in. If you've got a problem, it falls on deaf ears. If they've got a problem with you, expect to be written up, told off, get a notation on your file, etc. by some random person they call in to "document it."

avatar
Sav Response
9y
This is quite the review and we do thank you for sharing your frustrations. It is Emerge Media’s mission to provide a safe and healthy work environment; one where our staff feel empowered, valuable, and equal. We have and will continue to take great strides to insure that our employees not only know the avenues available to effectively present concerns like these, but also understand how to access the HR representation, educational resources, and benefits we have available. Collaboration, constructive feedback, and open communication will always be the backbone of our team’s success. While you've mentioned you are no longer with us to see these efforts, we do welcome you to reach back out to a member of our management team so we may better investigate the concerns you've presented here.
1.0
8 Feb 2017

Sinking Ship

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Office in the West Loop Start work at 830 Free food Access to Mac computer

Cons

Lack of leadership Lack of trust in employees Environment is toxic Zero company culture No clear vision for future All surface level interactions Everyone seems to be half in half out with commitment

Viewing 1 - 3 of 45 Reviews

Glassdoor has 48 Sav reviews submitted anonymously by Sav employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Sav is right for you.