I am not going to lie there are major problems that must be addressed before the company will be successful in the long run. I don’t think we can claim we are doing great as a company when we’ve lost ~35 employees across the business in the last 2-3 months, and (to make matters worse) we are in a hiring and travel freeze.
As others pointed out, leadership is disconnected from the teams. Both of the main company leaders have a tendency to stay distant and manage from afar. However, I don’t think it's intentional. I think it is due to the fact that there is just so much to do and too many problems to focus on for them to engage in. Because of this, they rely on the leadership team a lot and I am not sure the senior leaders are the right team to make us successful.
The senior leadership team really struggles to focus on priorities & stick to them. Therefore, everything becomes a priority (so nothing is a priority). A lot of decisions & approvals are kept at this level of leadership too, which creates a bottleneck delay in daily operations. As an employee, work can feel unsteady because there is no clear direction from the leaders on what we should focus on. As a result, I never know if my manager will be happy with my individual performance. There is a pendulum effect felt here since the priority is always something new. Unfortunately, this makes it so we have a lot of half-finished projects as a company.
I’m not sure if everyone at the company feels this way or just me, but my team's leader (that sits on the leadership team) is not the best when it comes to driving a successful team. Just as other reviews have pointed out about the senior leaders, my senior leader is also very distracted and very reactive. I don’t feel they support me or have my best interest at heart. And again, I don’t think it is intentional either. I simply think it’s because they are inexperienced in leading a team for such a big company. It's clear they are not trusted by the 2 main leaders, and I’m often thrown under the bus by my leader. I wish my leader would take an active interest in our team’s development and trust their employees more. As it is, they seem unhappy all the time. They also have a tendency to micromanage when they feel the pressure, which gets in the way of our team's work.
Culturally, there is a lot that can be improved at Edge. While it is not as bad as other reviews make it seem, there is a weird competitive and catty nature in this company that we can't seem to escape. Unfortunately, rather than proactively fostering a positive/supportive culture, the company continually chooses to ignore the issue altogether. In general, HR is never around and hard to get ahold of altogether. They also don’t seem to carry the same level of influence that I have experienced at prior companies. When you do bring something to HR’s attention, they defend the leadership team over employees 9 times out of 10, so I don’t know how much they can really help with culture.
Unfortunately, I do agree that the Dublin/Boston/Clavis offices seem to be the epicenter of the cultural issues. I say this because I have experienced firsthand their proclivity to gossip and create discontent amongst the wider team. I am not sure why it is (and I certainly wish it wasn’t true), but I would be lying if I didn’t say this was a real concern for me. It seems to me that these offices really enjoy gossiping about other teams as a way of bonding, and defending their own teams in the process (a real mob mentality). Usually, this could be brushed off as simply venting, but a lot of what is said really crosses the line of what is appropriate to say about coworkers. I can’t help but think if they are so willing to be so harsh about my team in front of me, what do they say about me behind my back?
Finally, Sales and Product/Engineering are struggling. I am not sure if it is the chicken or the egg in this situation, but these teams are not performing as they should. Product developments are few and far between, and when they do happen they are a far cry from what was promised to our clients. Additionally, we have so many products, all of which overlap, so it’s hard to keep straight how they each help our clients. Unfortunately, sales are also way off from their goals, which is stressful when it comes to company stability. I hear tale that we are doing fine as a company, but just aren’t growing as fast as we should. However, it’s hard to feel confident in my position all things considered. I think the performance of these teams would fix a lot of the problems we are facing by proxy, as problems tend to disappear when sales are good.
Ultimately, I can’t shake the feeling that these companies (PRRNG, OCR, Clavis, Brandview, Jumpshot) should not have been so quick to integrate. Maybe if they all focused on fixing the core issues on their products and increasing sales, we wouldn’t be dealing with all this turmoil. I regret the formation of Edge and wish we could undo the integration work until the problems were solved at each of the former individual companies.
