ideas42 Reviews

Unfortunately, I have no other positive things to say about my experience at ideas42.While the junior staff is amazing, their talent and potential is squandered by the unbelievable amount of incompetence and unfounded arrogance of upper management. Bullying runs down the food chain at ideas42 and the brunt of it all lands on those at the bottom once the bullying had no where else to go. ideas42 is by far the most destructive, threatening, uncomfortable, unprofessional, and unhealthy place I have ever worked and hope to ever work. ideas42 is a particularly challenging organization to work for and be successful in as a woman --- take a look at the breakdown of gender ratios by title. Men with less education and experience are senior to women with more experience and advanced education. ideas42 claims to be a flat, or at least flat-ish organization that prioritizes work/life balance. I found neither to be true. I was repeatedly instructed to simply take notes or to function largely as a personal assistant or secretary to VPs. Vacations are routinely interrupted for "important" work that consists of little more than altering a spread sheet or sending an email that could easily be accomplished by anyone else on the project in under a few minutes, thinly veiled under the guise of "learning." ideas42 claims to want to hire people that are innovative and entrepreneurial etc, yet is wildly resistant to new ideas and different modes of operation. The core values are used to blame and incite fear of non-belonging and serve little to no other function. Promotions are arbitrary and based largely on biased favoritism from the top despite a faux 360 review process. ideas42 is not the place to go if you're genuinely seeking social impact. More and more projects are being taken on solely for profit and explained away as a small percentage of the work, which is increasingly becoming more and more untrue. Josh Wright himself is a plague on the organization and ideas42 would do well to oust him. He conducts himself incredibly unprofessionally, engaging in smear campaigns against employees after they've given their notice in the form of taking meetings with other employees and discussing the employee that is exiting. This illustrates the overall approach to management at ideas42.

Imagine working at a paper sales company in Scranton, PA. The company's clearly dysfunctional top-down management style is at the root of all problems: project management, sales, performance reviews, etc. The management cannot mentor or lead. They don't know how to grow an organization because they never have. They are not respected inside or outside the company and do not know how to operate in the real world. But the management maintains that they are not top-down, and they use buzzwords that they hear in TED talks: "ownership", "flat", "feedback", "rigorrrrous", etc. The problem is management has only ever worked at top-down management places, so this is just lip service when they say it. They would not know how to really do the ownership or flat things if they had to, so chaos ensues. Junior staff are demeaned, and are on the receiving end of inappropriate/insensitive remarks from management about race and gender. Projects are chosen and scoped poorly, so most Ideas42 partners are upset and do not want to work with the company again. There is no legitimate training to be had, because management is just winging it themselves. 40 hour work weeks feel like 80 hours with all the drama. Careers are stunted. This would be a hilarious TV show if it weren't your own life and career.