ShipCompliant Reviews

I think many of the cons have been stated already, but I think further clarification is needed because it is clearly too easy to spin them the other way with “marketing speak”. Culture: While this was listed under the previous positive review as a “pro”, the phrasing used was almost verbatim to the phrasing used in past job postings and their careers page to promote the company. I used to read them over, so it was quite obvious. The culture at ShipCompliant is a culture based on fear and manipulation – plain and simple. Examples: - As mentioned in a previous review, I have also witnessed people literally cry because the CEO or CTO (both did this often) are literally yelling at someone publicly. The entire company gets to witness this intimidating display of aggression. Both of them have very volatile tempers that neither of them has learned to control. If you know what the phrase “walking on eggshells” means, then you have a fairly accurate idea of what it “feels” like working at ShipCompliant. In fact, it was well known that that CTO had what the he called a “threat level” where it was a running joke in executive leadership (not so funny for the rest of the team) about what the particular “threat level” of the day was. In fact, the CTO appeared to take pride in this. The mood of the CTO and/or CEO determined how scary or peaceful the day was. It was ubiquitously agreed upon that the most peaceful, focused, and productive days were the days where both of them were absent. - It was highly frowned upon if you left before 6:00 pm - even if you got in early, worked at home in the evening, and/or worked on the weekend. People were literally afraid to leave the office and tried very hard to leave without the CEO or CTO seeing them exit the office for fear of what might be said. - There wasn’t a common performance review process. Generally the negative feedback from executive leadership was in the form of threats of getting fired or public complaining / yelling. The common form of positive feedback was in the Friday team standup done in such a way that often praised one individual with an undertone of “everyone else should really try harder to do this positive thing”. Many people that had worked at ShipCompliant for years had never gotten a proper formal review or the direction that comes with it. How this culture was created: The majority of the team members have a particular personality type. As mentioned in another review, the company has each individual take a personality profile test before working at ShipCompliant. In general, one would think that would be a good company practice. You have to make sure people “fit”, right? Unfortunately, “fitting” means that they must be able to be taken advantage of by more aggressive people. In general, there are two types of people at ShipCompliant. 1.) Intellectual, agreeable, less-conflict driven individuals. One could say they have more passive types of personalities. 2.) Intellectual, direct, intense, more-conflict driven individuals. One could say they have more dominant / aggressive personalities. Neither of these personality types is better or worse than the other and this inherent mix can be highly beneficial for most companies if done properly. But in ShipCompliant’s case, the personality mix is split directly between executive leadership and, literally, everyone else. If you understand this aspect, then everything else in this review will make more sense. This presents a situation where highly ethical intelligent people get manipulated and taken advantage of (i.e. walked all over) on a daily basis because they are simply terrified to speak up.. Everyone has seen the CTO and CEO explode on them or someone else publicly and they would do everything in their power to avoid this. And like a revolving door, those that tried to stand up for themselves, found themselves out of a job or simply quit. The fear was so bad that the company would put out associate satisfaction surveys and many of my fellow associates were literally too scared to fill them out because they didn’t believe management’s promise that they were anonymous. Granted, they used standard survey software that provided this anonymity, but it still wasn’t enough for many to feel safe. Fast Paced: This was also mentioned as a “pro” in a previous review. Here is more clarity. Yes, ShipCompliant is “face paced” and “ever changing” – but that is more a function of everything being the highest priority and more “fires” (software bugs) than people and time to put them out. No one really knows what he or she will do when they arrive in the morning, because most days are spent dealing with real-time emergencies that tend to add to the high stress environment. Even when the developers spend 12+ hours a day, which happens quite often, it barely supports the current client load and fragile code base. More bugs are introduced and/or reported each day than the rate of fixing them. It is not “controlled” chaos. The only thing that is assured is that someone will probably get yelled at because the effort the team gives is never enough and someone always gets blamed (publicly). All of this leads to a complete lack of focus – especially when the CTO and CEO feel the need to randomly pull people away from their committed responsibilities for the current development cycle (sprint) for whatever pet project they deem necessary. Another running joke in management was people should do everything they can to keep the CEO away from developers or client services. Although this was verbally stated often by all of management, it was rarely upheld and the CEO never truly recognized the value of having this focus. Place to grow: Yes, there are in-house promotions – lots of them, in fact. This is a factor of having such a high turnover rate. As another review mentioned, ShipCompliant’s management tends to give people new titles (promotions) with more responsibility (more hours) because they often aren’t willing to backfill the position in a timely manner or even at all. I experienced this as did many of my fellow associates. There was always a workload increase and rarely a monetary increase. In fact, in associate satisfaction surveys, it was commonly sited that there were “no career paths” at ShipCompliant except in the rare occasion. Transparency: Despite what the other positive review mentioned, very few people knew where the company was at and where it was going. In fact, showing basic business financials about the health of the company was only started recently in the last couple years. It had always been completely hidden up to that point. And even the financials that are disclosed now are always spun the way executive leadership wants to spin them. They do not show financials in the way that an “open” company would show them and certainly don’t follow best practices in this manner. Company Events: Not much else to say that other reviews haven’t, but the company events are more “marketing” than a reward for associates. Many people end up working a vast majority of the time. Summary: In general, this company has been an unorganized “startup” for the last 10+ years. However, most of the “pros” one thinks about when they hear the word “startup” don’t really apply. There is high turnover do to unethical and aggressive work behaviors, extremely long hours, and very little reward. People literally get yelled at frequently, many clients are unhappy, bugs are out of control, stress is incredibly high, and people sit in a constant state of fear. The majority of stress at ShipCompliant is negative stress, radiates from executive leadership, and is completely unnecessary. Additionally, this company is very good at portraying a positive, upbeat façade to the outside world through tight controls, aggression, and manipulation. However, if you take a deeper dive, you will see a group of incredibly talented individuals, lead by a culture of fear, working 60-hour weeks for a company that is in shambles – at least from a culture perspective. If you want to work at ShipCompliant, I implore you to do your own research by talking to multiple people that currently work there as well as people who have worked there in the past. Please don’t rely on the marketing materials that HR may have fed you. There are more issues than simply not having standing desks and a confusing organizational structure (which is true), which a previous review sited as “cons”. I tend to agree with the other previous review that the majority of positive reviews have a high likelihood of being written by HR (most likely told to do so by executive leadership) since the phasing is so similar to the phrasing used in their past marketing materials. I hope that no one is that naïve.

There are two main categories to touch on here. The first is job-focused, the second will be company focused. For the job-focused cons, it's especially compensation, work/life balance, and career opportunities. 1. Compensation- you wouldn't think you work for a highly successful tech company in Boulder based on the salaries at ShipCompliant. While the company says it seeks top talent (what company wouldn't), actions speak louder than words and the action just isn't there. You might take on a tremendous amount of additional responsibility, but only see your pay increase marginally at best, and even then it will only happen during the annual review process. Pay is extraordinarily low based on what is expected of employees, which brings me to... 2. Work/Life Balance- Outwardly, the company seems like it should do a great job of this, winning one of Outside Magazine's coveted "Best Places To Work" in 2014. The culture itself doesn't always lend itself to a healthy balance. While it may be technically be the case that employees are encouraged to maintain balance between work and life, that's really only the case when all work has been finished. That sounds great, but there's always more work to do. Expect to stay late, come in early, or be looked at as an under-performing employee. There is a growing, single-minded focus on metrics and numbers- understandable to some extent, but quickly becoming the only important measure of the business- that contributes to an almost inexorable feeling of a necessity to sacrifice personal time in favor of work. 3. Career opportunities- While management continues to try and emphasize the avenues for career growth, there is still a lack of concrete action to back it up. For the company-focused cons, it's largely the gradual disappearance of the culture and diminishing quality of the product. 1. Company culture- After the acquisition in 2015, the unique and wonderful culture of ShipCompliant has been slowly replaced with a more corporate culture (along with the bureaucracy that comes along with that). As an example, every Friday we have wine hour, essentially a company happy hour where we're able to be social and relax at the end of the week. Historically, people would stay at the office until late evening to spend time with their friends at work. Now, people either go back to work or they leave the office. 2. Quality of the product- ShipCompliant used to have, hands down, the single best product in the (albeit somewhat niche) market. While that may still technically be true, it's now because of a lack of other options in the market as opposed to a continuing quality of the ShipCompliant software. The priorities from management seem to convey that the goal is "good enough" as opposed to being the best. There have been decisions that suggest a disregard for current clients, many of whom have begun to notice. This isn't isolated to a handful of decisions either; rather, it's symptomatic of much greater declines in the business generally. Also, the CEO is no longer Jason Eckenroth, who was fantastic. The disapproval is for Andy, the CEO at Sovos (the parent company).