Smarty Pants Reviews

Strange culture, abusive workload and hyper-controlling president make this a miserable work environment. I'm surprised they attract any talent, but most don't stay. Don't be fooled by shiny image and the work-at-home structure - you will not be able to hit send on an e-mail or go to the bathroom without a call two minutes later on your house phone dumping work on you. Work relationships here are highly dysfunctional, and questionable ethical practices were not unusual on the projects I worked on. This company will NEVER grow beyond it's current scope, despite some cool research methods, because the president micro-manages down to every email sentence. I've never seen a professional in research/consulting industry so arrogant and controlling. There are no "real" high or even mid-level positions in this organization ... you are a foot soldier who executes her narrow vision, or she makes life hell for you and you're out. Only her family members (names disguised to hide this) and a very few long-time accomplices are in her "inner circle" and stick around. There are MANY wonderful companies in this space - Smarty Pants is not one of them.

You will sacrifice a great deal of your personal time if you want to please the owner, but not necessarily the client. The owner has an almost unreachable bar to reach as far as what is and isn’t ready to submitted to clients. She fixates on minutiae, instead of big picture things, which put a great deal of stress on me and, consequently, my family. Further, her narrow vision of how things should and shouldn’t be ensures that company growth is almost impossible. They’re known to give employees very short leashes and firings are super common. Ultimately, I didn’t want a job that was my life, and there was no division between business time and personal time, such that the hours were very long and weekend work was more common than not.