Black Mountain Systems reviews

- Unskilled personnel management, in particular at the director level - Unforgiving learning curve - Both expectations and the stress/pay ratio is high - Aggressive billable hours minimum - Poor working environment Any policies mentioned below may be different now. They do change things up now and then, which is a positive. Unskilled management (Mid-level) Managers here have mostly been promoted internally by successfully implementing the product in the early days of BMS. They appear to have had no formal management training. The skills that make for successful implementation are not the same skills required for managing people, and the latter has not developed naturally. Accordingly, personnel management tactics are often clumsy, brash, and demotivating. Demotivating personnel management tactics are, however, not restricted to the implementation department; they also exist higher-up. As an example, execs once introduced a training session by effectively belittling the engineers, belaboring their lack of industry knowledge. A more effective strategy would have been to simply state that clients would like their BMS partners to have more industry knowledge and then conduct the training. Management heavily relies on their internal tracking tool, and is impressively adept at managing those numbers. Two problems: 1) The numbers may not be telling the truth, because the aggressive minimums I suspect implicitly encourage employees to engage in "aggressive rounding.” 2) While managers are skilled at managing numbers, the reality of the management job is that the even more critical part of a manager's job is to manage people, not numbers. Startup Learning Curve The learning curve here is made steeper due to lofty and fairly rigid expectations. The on-boarding program is essentially a list of outdated and incomplete webpages which you review and then are expected to have mastered. High expectations at the mid-management level combined with aggressive deadlines can make it uncomfortable to ask questions. Simple clarification questions were sometimes answered with harsh sarcasm or hostility, even when a sub-5 second answer would suffice. I witnessed someone ridiculed in an email sent to the group for not knowing something that they actually could not have known. Mistakes are not handled well by management, and employee growth suffers accordingly. An internal task and billing system is heavily relied on for daily operations, including tracking projects, tasks, and billable hours. The tool also has a steep learning curve and there is very little quality documentation. Management has enjoyed years of experience with the tools and processes (they created them), yet new employees do not seem to be afforded even a fraction of that time to master the tool. Management Expectations and the Pay/Stress Ratio I have never worked for more aggressive and demanding bosses than at BMS, leading to a higher stress to pay ratio than I've ever experienced. While some of this can be expected at early-stage companies, one generally receives equity as compensation. Mgmt expects non-owner employees to behave like owners. Regarding pay, there was an implementation bonus program: As mentioned elsewhere in this review, though, the billable hours minimum is very aggressive, so to earn the hours, you would need to pull some very long hours or engage in "creative rounding". Only one person was able to earn a bonus in this program. Benefits Comments: - The healthcare plan is ok, but improvements could be made with the prescription drug benefit - Investing choices in the 401k plan are largely no name funds with low Morningstar ratings (3 or below). Thankfully, they do match some contributions. - BMS does not reimburse professional dues, but it will pay for you to take the exams to earn the licenses. - BMS does not reimburse for internet at home, but you will likely need to work from home. - BMS does not reimburse mobile phone charges, but you will at times be expected to check and answer emails in the evenings and on weekends. Billable Hours Requirements Are Aggressive First, what mgmt calls a “target” is in practice a minimum - which is an important difference for your quality of life and work/life balance. BMS previously required a 10-hour workday minimum and made a change, but maintained the same aggressive hourly minimum. In other words, mgmt did not decrease the actual workload, just changed how it was presented. It still takes about 10 actual hours to yield 7 hours of billable time. Unless you are working on some internal projects and have been given a waiver, you must bill 7 hours to a client per day, equal to 35 hours per week, every week. At first this sounds reasonable, but when you break down what is actually billable, the reasonableness falls apart rather quickly: 1) Hours that count are only those "billable to the client”. This means company meetings are not billable to the company as they often are in other companies, and do not count towards your minimum. This can potentially add an hour or more to your day, which is particularly inconvenient if there are surprise meetings you had not planned for. Company training does not count towards your minimum. 2) Travel to a client is NOT billable to a client, so visiting a client can torpedo your progress on hours billed. You may be able to work on the plane, but a lot of work requires a high speed connection, and due to a tight travel policy, you will likely be in a tiny seat. If you want to meet your billable minimum each month, and happen to travel, do the math on how you are going to make up those hours. You will see that travel plus a few unplanned, unbillable meetings will send your work/life balance out of control quickly. Mgmt at some point changed the optics of the billable requirements. Instead of a 7 hour per day billing minimum, they created teams and had a team hourly billing minimum that was equal to the number of team members times 7 hours per day. If your team had internal projects, some of this was waived, but otherwise there was no difference. As was the "relaxing" of the 10-hour workday requirement, this change from individual to a team minimum requirement was immaterial in practice for the individual. It should be clear by now: management firmly believes their billable hours minimum is reasonable and is unwilling to budge. Make sure that you consider this, especially if you join without equity. Working Environment The working environment is negative for individual concentration and focus because it is an open office space with footballs and remote control helicopters at times flying about and a loud a/c unit overhead. It can be great fun, for sure, but if you require peace and quiet to focus, the office will present an additional challenge.