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Synapse Studios

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Synapse Studios Reviews

3.8

87% would recommend to a friend

(10 total reviews)

83% positive business outlook

Reviews by job title

10 reviews
1.0
25 Feb 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

A lot of the people at Synapse are very friendly.

Cons

The pay is drastically below market value for every role in the organization, and Synapse will let you go when you ask why your coworker makes 25% more than you. Management claims to want to try out "new" processes but is ultimately 10 years behind everyone else out there. For the product team this could be because the director of product has no prior product management experience. Many teams lack the professional skills needed for initiatives because Synapse doesn't pay enough to hire/retain DevOps experts or developer architects. From time to time this leads to production fires that could have otherwise been avoided. Synapse has some great clients and some who are absolutely awful to work with, and they know that. While claiming culture is good and important at Synapse, they will prioritize terrible to work with clients over the mental health of employees. There is substantial turnover at Synapse. In the last two weeks Synapse has lost half of their Project Coordinators. The PC role at Synapse is also a Scrum Master role, but with a below market value PC salary. I would not recommend Synapse as a place to work for anyone who takes their career seriously.

avatar
Synapse Studios Response
4y
We've been adjusting comp upward significantly across the board, and aggressively so for some roles because there was a bit of a fair critique there. We've closed that gap and continue to make progress doing so. We would never retaliate against an employee asking why there is a difference in compensation in their position vs. another's: we strive to maintain internal consistency but in some cases when an employee is underperforming in the role (and openly telling us "I'm doing the bare minimum possible here," it probably warrants a change of scenery, managed gracefully with plenty of notice so that they can land on their feet. In consulting, there are always fantastic clients and frustrating clients, but we've been extremely proactive about transitioning problematic clients out, or establishing clear boundaries to protect psychological health of our team. We can always be better about that, but I'm pleased with our progress on that initiative over the past six months, and the continued progress we've made with legacy clients. Regarding turnover, it ebbs and flows. We're extremely proud to have _really_ low churn across the board, but we did have two of our six Project Coordinators leave at the same time, though a third we did ask to part ways with because of the above circumstance. Our average tenure is over 4 years, which is pretty remarkable in this industry and something I'm always working to improve. I agree we do need to fill open positions more quickly, and work to hire more top talent, though. That's a big initiative for us this year and something I'm eager to continue to work on. And the critique on hiring a more formal HR resource is good feedback. While I think we've been able to handle things pretty well in the past, as we continue to grow, we'll need a more dedicated structure there. Thanks for the feedback!
2.0
13 June 2023

Find another place, this one is not worth it.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The work-life balance is pretty good.

Cons

- One of the owners goes out of his way to belittle people. He has no problem calling you stupid if he doesn't agree with you. Not a great leader or person in general. - It's a very cliquey place with fake people. They pretend to care, but they really don't. - Pay is well below the market, they have made attempts to adjust but it's still well below. - They only paid out only 1 of the 4 bonuses last year. - I have more but I think this is enough.

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Glassdoor has 10 Synapse Studios reviews submitted anonymously by Synapse Studios employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Synapse Studios is right for you.