Pros
I started at CustomInk right out of college but I had experienced working for various northern VA companies while working in college. By comparison I’d say this company is invested in me as an individual and my coworkers are truly incredible people. I think I have actually become a better person by being afforded an opportunity to work with such creative and dynamic individuals. Plus there are some companies in northern VA that are straight up nightmarish - seriously scary people and toxic work environments. I have worked at CustomInk for many years and have been afforded the opportunity to work in several roles. In my current role they allow me to carve out a little bit of time each week to take Lynda.com courses that are job related or simply interest me that aren’t CustomInk relevant. Sometimes I get too busy to take the time but it’s nice that it’s there all the same. I’ve had managers that believed in me and have allowed me the freedom to brainstorm and then implement those ideas/initiatives acting as my own project manager. Management was in the past and recently has been very flexible with my scheduled shift. This helps me feel like I have a good work life balance as I don’t have to completely cut off outside opportunities in order to stick to a rigid shift structure at all times. While CustomInk has changed a TON in my tenure from a start-up, to working out the kinks in implementing performance based metrics that adequately compensate for stellar performance, I can at minimum say they are trying hard to make it a fun place to work that compensated in a fair way. Others have already expounded on the food and environment and health benefits and leave. Overtime, both mandatory and voluntary, has been reduced a ton by various business initiatives which is something older reviewers rated low.
Cons
Change is a constant and it is sometimes extremely hard to keep up with. We have resources to help us through changes but there often seem to be caveats and exceptions to most every rule. When you are talking with a customer and trying to problem solve it just seems like added complexity that doesn’t need to be there at times. I don’t feel like I should have to read several pages of text that link with other pages and watch videos in order to answer a customers seemingly simple question. With all the changes I’d love to see periodic retraining so we aren’t being asked to continuously learn on the fly. My role has changed several times over while I’ve been at it and I don’t always have the time to devote to learning all the ins and outs when changes are so frequent or there are new systems to navigate all while problem solving for the customer. New hires have a leg up as they aren’t being asked to learn on the fly. The cumulative changes are for the better though overall it just takes time to constantly change up your workflow to accommodate rapid change and from many different fronts. I’d also love to see us take customers feedback about their experience and really quantify it and act on it. Right now the customer feedback seems like it is just a score they give us and as long as that score is high the customers concerns don’t seem to be investigated much. I’d also love to see our role measured by how many of your customers repeat instead of measuring how they felt once an order was delivered. Maybe the same customers giving seven ratings are not the same as the ones continuously purchasing. Maybe these high dollar customers vote instead with their pocketbook. There are so many emails every day. I filtered my emails for three months into a folder to quantify them and there were definitely close to 1,700 in that 3 month time frame. The problem reporting feedback channel is used by only a few and can really hurt relationships with others in the same department and across teams. Giving feedback is something everyone is asked to do but often people don’t do. You won’t win any popularity contests if you are the one reporting that someone neglected to hit a button in an order as this could negatively impact that persons pay. Nobody wants to feel like they are negatively impacting someone’s pay and it’s extremely hard not to take the feedback personally when sometimes it feels like the same 3 people are always alerting you about a mental slip. As others have noted I’ve literally had my best manager here and also my worst manager here. A manager can completely make or break your desire to come in and do good work. A good friend worked at CustomInk and he didn’t have the same caliber of manager that I have had more consistently and that caused this really talented and dedicated coworker to ultimately leave the company. From my experience managers hired from outside of the company are typically the ones who are most likely to throw someone under the bus and then run you over with that bus. I’d much rather have Inkers promoted internally....when they are ready to step up to the challenge that is. My friends reality by and large hasn’t been mine, but managers are not the most consistent here for sure. .25 cents on the dollar up to 6% company 401k match is pretty anemic. That is only 1.5% at max. Some of the funds in the 401k are decent but I’d love to see more admiral share options / funds with really low expense ratios outside of the S&P 500 index. A Roth 401k or HSA would be terrific too.