Four Winds Interactive reviews

Product Rollout - Non-existent. There is insufficient planning that goes into the rollout of products. Operations/implementation teams are left to pick up the pieces of over promised products that have not been tested or vetted in a customer environment. New products are haphazardly sold before the Operations team has been made aware of their existence leading to an inability to properly plan a successful implementation. There is a lot of flying by the seat of your pants with little to no direction. Undervalued - Hard work will get you more work and likely no recognition. The system for employee recognition is akin to a high school popularity contest. The same people are recognized by the same people over and over again, if you are quiet and work hard you will not be recognized by your peers or your management. Inside jokes between managers and some of the inner circle employees are rampant and will be brought up in team meetings where only half of the team will get the joke. You will be grossly underpaid for your role unless you negotiate a competitive salary on the front end. If you try to negotiate a higher raise you will be told there wasn't money in the budget for it. Processes - There are few to no processes and what processes do exist have been so overengineered to try and act as a bandaid for the broken processes which only serves to further break and muddy the waters. Training for your role - don't expect anything substantial. Management - be cool - make friends - get in with the bros and go far in this company. Managers only seem to interact with the team members they "like" or are friends with, if you aren't friends with your manager expect to be ignored unless you are in trouble or having a scheduled 1 on 1, and even during your 1 on 1 your manager will probably be on his computer only giving you half of his attention. Benefits are not competitive with other tech companies. Skewed data - at company meetings it would constantly be touted how amazing the tech support team was doing and how high scores on surveys were, yet clients would frequently comment on how badly they were treated by tech support team members. When the tech support team members and managers were given this feedback it was dismissed and the person providing the feedback chastised for making a manager uncomfortable. Bottom line, big issues are swept under the rug because they make people uncomfortable and it isn't what executive management wants to hear. Company meetings are stroke-fests where employees are encouraged to drink the company kool-aid and ignore glaring issues. Sales Reps- while improvements have been made on the sales team, many sales reps are difficult to work with, lazy sellers and toxic. The work environment, under-compensation and lack of true leadership turns positive, skilled and motivated professionals into jaded and frustrated employees.

PAY. For most positions, FWI pays well below market value. Getting promoted does not always come with a pay raise, and you will have to fight tooth and nail to earn what you deserve. Performance reviews are few and far between. Managers do not keep track of positive things, only complaints, so low or no raises are “justified”. Keep track of your own performance and achievements if you expect them to be acknowledged. BENEFITS. The health benefits are not great. You will have the option of a high deductible plan with HSA or paying a LOT for a minimally more comprehensive plan. 401k exists but with minimal matching. “Unlimited PTO” is a huge draw, but good luck actually getting to take time off if your workload is high (which it almost always will be). CAREER DEVELOPMENT. If you are hoping to grow a career here, know that your success will be based more on your relationships with management and executives than on your performance. You can be a top performer in your department and still be fighting for fair pay and reasonable time off; forget a promotion. WORKLOAD. You will be 120% allocated, working overtime, and picking up half finished projects due to constant turnover. You may be traveling to client sites 60-80% of the time; you will not get comp time for days spent traveling on the weekends or the 60-80 hour weeks you will spend onsite with clients. You will not be paid enough to feel justified in spending 60-80 hours working in a week. It will burn you out. PRODUCT. The software product constantly has new features being added. Projects are often sold based on features that are still in testing phases, or worse have yet to be developed. You will end up working far outside the scope of your job to try and make software features work with stop gap solutions, and you will have to be the face of the company for your frustrated clients. Bugs often take 2-3 software cycles to be resolved (to no fault of the development team who work their tails off trying to keep up with all of the features being sold before they are developed). The product is powerful, and does a lot of cool things, but it doesn’t do any of them perfectly. The core product needs to be overhauled and features need to be better prioritized. Development teams need to be able to have the final say on when a feature will be ready BEFORE it is sold. HUMAN RESOURCES. The HR team at FWi is a joke. Individual privacy is not respected. Anonymous complaints don’t exist, and HR will not intervene on your behalf or advocate for your workplace rights. I’m not even sure they know what your workplace rights are. Sexual harassment complaints are not taken seriously. CULTURE. FWi really values their culture and they work hard to make everything laid back and chill—to a fault. There is a real frat boy bro culture present (not always in a sexist way, but most definitely in a clique-y exclusive way). They offer cross fit and yoga classes, lunch runs, and fresh fruit on Wellness Wednesdays, there are happy hours and Fun Fridays—these things are all very attractive, but they are just a band-aid for the broken culture behind the scenes. Friends of employees (especially managers) are hired over random applicants. Same principle applies to promotions and raises. You can climb the ladder only if you rub elbows with the right people. “Fun” Fridays can be downright unprofessional. Office space becomes mixed use for drinking beer and partying at 3pm on Fridays—if you have actual client work to do you’ll want to book a conference room. Workplace relationships are rampant. People were sleeping with each other all over the board when I worked there. It fosters a lot of gossip which fosters a very unhealthy environment. I don’t think workplace relationships are a problem if kept professional but that definitely wasn’t the case here. PRIORITIES. The priorities of many of the management teams are majorly skewed. Seat time is more valuable than work ethic. This can be a terrible measure of employee performance, yet many managers viewed it as a top priority. If you are an employee who travels a lot for assignments, don’t even think about working from home when you’re in Denver. Seat time is much more heavily rewarded, even when seat time means sticking around on fun Friday to drink with your colleagues after 3pm instead of going home.