Pros
If you lack work experience, this is a place to go to build your resume. You’ll get lots of work and meaningful work to build your resume. You will build a great comradery with your fellow employees under the crushing pressure of the executives. Just don’t stay too long (see cons) and think that the behavior in this company culture is acceptable elsewhere. Have an exit strategy. Great opportunities for experienced workers to get into management, but beware of the management culture that you will be expected to employ. You will be directed to tell your people when ice storms hit Dallas to either stay in the office until 6 PM or later and all work is done before they can leave. Or when there is ice on the road and schools are cancelled, you need to tell your staff they must come in or take PTO – even when they could easily use VPN to get their work done. You will be expected to continue the culture of fear and intimidation at your level. If you have in your past jobs had issues with low morals, back-stabbing, disregard for fellow employees, sexist behaviors, lack of business ethics, outbursts of anger & vulgarity but can produce great business results than ACTIVE is the place for you – the ends justify the means and you’ll be on the fast track for the 27th floor. They have a serious retention problem, so if you have experience you can leverage it for a high starting salary (don’t get it tied to a bonus).
Cons
Awful executive management. They started at Monster when it was relevant and by the time they left their strategy was being taken apart by LinkedIn and others. Don’t fall for the bagels/soda, they care nothing about people and institute a culture of fear/intimidation/bullying to maximize every ounce of worker output. Maybe this is the common culture of the west coast dot coms, but at least they contractually share with employees on the financial success of the company (not vague promises). The only big day coming at ACTIVE is for the execs. Work life balance is a joke. 50+/60+ hours; no notification of working late/weekends. No flexibility in schedule. No policy for how to handle working with China. If you want to hit your project goals, you will have to spend a lot of time outside normal working hours to maximize what you get from China. I thought working at ACTIVE would be support of my active lifestyle. Fact is plain and simple I was a better customer of ACTIVE’s registration products before working at active and I was again a better customer once I left. Vague promises from senior leadership that all the extra hours will either be financially compensated or get unofficial PTO are hollow. Don’t believe it. There is no product strategy at the senior management level, only an interest in what looks cool. While senior management wants to become a data driven company, they have neither the experience to define a strategy nor the tolerance to listen to those that do. They are quick to berate the individual contributor instead of looking at whether people are being set up for success. In my short time at active not only did I choose to voluntarily leave, but so many others did as well. Never seen anything like it.