Significant negatives and revolving door staff outweigh few positives - Senior Individual Contributor Velir Studios Employee Review

2.0
May 24, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Nice, regular mix of company sponsored outings, events, trips & activities - Most individual contributors are smart, passionate, down-to-earth people - Good work/life balance which tends to be uncommon among agency life with some work from home flexibility - Good benefits and vacation

Cons

- Inexperienced and inconsistent C-level management with a total lack of real leadership poise/presence; results in poor decision-making on a regular basis - Perpetually changing organizational structure (mostly within Operations) - CEO should probably be CFO; focuses heavily on financial nitpicking to a fault and is unable to extract himself from granular day-to-day operational and finance responsibilities - Promotions can be difficult, unless you're one of the favorites or you're fortunate enough to be assigned to a highly visible client with a hugely successful project - Pretty much every single project that comes in as new business is under-budgeted, under-staffed, over-promised with an unrealistic timeline in order to win clients/projects; Project and account teams are regularly setup for failure from day 1 - Inconsistent and seemingly "dartboard throw" determination of revenue targets which drive end-of-year bonuses; Communication regarding tracking against financial goals is basically smoke and mirrors, actual company performance is anyone's guess until the numbers are all final at year end. - Below market salary and compensation, particularly in non-senior roles - Lack of cultural diversity within management - Incredibly high turnover rate within the last 2-3 years, seemingly accelerating. At the management level alone: COO, CSO and several VP positions have fled over the past 18 months - Obsessed with internal organizational and financial perception, resulting in complete lack of transparency - Lack of accountability (though this is improving)

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Velir Studios Response
8y
Thank you for taking the time to write this review. It covers a number of things and we appreciate your effort to provide us with honest feedback on your experience here. Admittedly, the review was tough to read. In part because there are certain areas that you called out (leadership, the estimation process, etc.) that we have already recognized as needing improvement and are working hard to change, but also, because we never want anyone’s experience at Velir to be this way. We have invested heavily in several strategic hires in leadership (with a powerful depth of experience in the agency space) in the past few months, and expect these investments to result in impactful change across the company over the coming months and years. We are also focusing strongly on continuing to refine our operations and estimation abilities, and are confident that these changes will better set our teams up for success moving forward. We are glad you find your colleagues to be smart, passionate, and down-to-earth people, and also that you enjoy our benefits, work/life balance, and the events we work hard to plan for everyone. We will continue to enhance these offerings to ensure they meet the needs of all our employees. We are doing our best to run a thriving, profitable, independent agency that also maintains the unique cultural attributes that make us Velir. We will incorporate your feedback into our process of making positive change and will continue to focus on how we can improve our environment so that you or others don’t have similar experiences in the future. If you would like to discuss this further, please don’t hesitate to contact our People Operations team (po@velir.com) or your manager.

Explore other reviews about Velir Studios

5.0
Apr 7, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Velir has a strong supportive work culture. We are finding our voice in the echo system and committed to delivering exceptional work to Clients. This job is not one you just clock out and not think about, it’s the one you wake ,up excited to tackle the next adventure and see what you can attribute to the team! The support we all have for one another is amazing and the way we all roll our sleeves up together is what I have been looking for in a company for a long time.

Cons

Our calendars definitely have quite a bit of meetings daily but we are working as a team to find ways to minimize these and allocate ways to support one another.

4.0
Jun 29, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great team and management, remote environment where they make an effort to communicate well

Cons

No opportunities to grow especially as AI has increased. No promotions or raises regardless of great output

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