Most of my experience with Siva has unfortunately been negative. Many issues with Siva stem from how the owners run their company. Don't trust the positive reviews. There is a lot to say about Siva, which I will mention in a TL;DR, as well as an expanded review below.
TL;DR:
The company has rough and unorganized management leading to extremely rushed projects, disrespected workers, and extremely low employee retention when compared to the small size of the company. Clients are overpromised certain things in order to convince them to sign on with Siva, and the company's management of projects alone results in under-delivery. Concerns from employees brought to the owners often result in nothing being done, or employees being fired.
For an expanded review:
Management at the company is often disrespectful, regardless of your past experience or knowledge on a subject. You can be completely correct on what a client's needs are, yet if it doesn't match what the boss wants, it doesn’t matter. This has led to multiple wasted hours on projects, resulting in designers contacting the companies directly instead of listening to management, in order to better understand the company and their needs. This action, of servicing clients better, results in both the clients being happy with the design work produced, but management punishing workers for going behind the company's back. They can't accept that they don't understand some aspects of design and marketing better than people they hired to specifically do those jobs.
Most projects are stacked onto the shoulders of only a few workers, who are usually given last-minute notice about projects even existing, although theyève been agreed to either weeks or months prior. Due to late notice and poor management, work on these projects often results in overtime being forced on employees in all departments to get them finished. This poor time management also results in designers being belittled for stating that the time allocated towards a project isn't enough. Most companies, that are smaller than Siva will have at the *very least* 4 designers on payroll to get projects completed in a timely manner while hiring contract workers for specialized avenues of design. For the entirety of Siva Creative, which handles dozens of clients a day, the company has 1 full-time designer, and will, at most, have 2 designers hired at a time. Usually, the 2nd designer will be inexperienced because they are new, being hired on due to the firing of other designers or due to a designer leaving because of work conditions.
When I worked there, the company went through multiple designers and at least a dozen employees in roughly a year due to these issues. One guy just stopped showing up 2 weeks into his job because of how the bosses treated him. One designer was fired due to asking for more pay, as the workload of a creative director was split between multiple people since the director left the company, but no raise was given to anyone to take up the workload. One worker, who was the best designer in after effects/animation at the time, was also let go for suggesting the company allocate more time towards the projects so a better product could be made. The company also had 2 interns, working for free, who also could not handle the belittling from the company’s owners. In essence, Siva doesn't value its employees, or frankly, its clients. They also don’t seem to understand the needs of their employees to get the job done correctly, and they like to waste your time and say you are wasting theirs.
Another example of wasted time you are punished for is due to project time being interrupted to force workers to partake in morale-boosting events such as Yoga, basketball, making tik-tok videos to promote the company, etc. The issue with this is that, while being seen as a somewhat good idea in principle, the management doesn't take into account the critical time required for project development, and often projects are delivered late to clients because of these delays. Also, there are constant mandatory meetings about "How-to's" of marketing and the like, which also wastes project time.
One of the worst parts of Siva, that I can see hasn’t changed in recent months by talking to recent employees, is that Siva forces their employees use their personal social media accounts, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, to post material promoting their business. They also monitor everything you do on social media and tie your KPIs to how your “performance” on social media results in more clients, regardless of your position at the company. In addition, they also use your accounts to spam marketing links and promotions for their business directly to your connections on LinkedIn. They do this while also focusing on very strange marketing tools like podcasts, which, obviously, don’t help promote the company to clients in any meaningful way, but they won’t take employee opinions into consideration when deciding how to market the business.
The company doesn’t seem to understand that the final product they put out, and what is seen by the client, is in large part a result of their design team, and they do not respect your time or expertise. To use a made-up example, let's say a website for a company, alongside physical marketing material and branding designs such as brochures, a logo, business cards, banners, etc, takes roughly 10-16 hours in total to do, the company will allocate 6 hours to it, not inform marketing or design on who the client is or what their needs are, and then micromanage you throughout the design process making it more difficult to get it complete. Your actions on your computer are also constantly tracked and recorded while you work, and if you are not moving your computer mouse as fast as they like, you’ll get a mouth full. Then, ultimately, when the project isn’t finished, the owners berate you for not finishing it on time. Your time is not respected, your opinion is not respected, and ultimately, the client's needs are not respected.
In conclusion, I would either stay away from this company, whether you are looking for a job or looking to hire Siva until they change their attitude towards their workers and drastically improve their workflow. If not, use this company as a stepping stone to something better.
