Groundworks reviews

2.8

39% would recommend to a friend

(479 total reviews)

Doug Sanders

51% approve of CEO

45% positive business outlook

Groundworks has an employee rating of 2.8 out of 5 stars, based on 479 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Groundworks employee rating is 23% below average for employers within the Construction, Repair & Maintenance Services industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

479 reviews
1.0
Nov 16, 2025

Meat Grinder

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Decent salary, nice office building, great onboarding process

Cons

I was hired as a "Senior Videographer," then my supervisor, who was promoted to Creative Director, who I was replacing, changed my title to "Head of Videography" without discussing that with me. I thought that was a little odd. Did it feel like I WAS head of videography or was ever going to be? No, not at all. More than anything it appeared that I was meant to emulate my supervisor in his former position to a tee. Even though I had more experience than him and the three other members of that department combined, the few odd minor suggestions I made in the 2 months I was there, were ignored. Right off the bat, I was sent to Canada for a shoot because one of the other videographers wasn't allowed to leave the country (!?) and another one had a mysterious issue with his passport, meaning he just didn't want to go. Ok fine, I thought, no big deal. I had traveled quite a bit on shoots over the years so I didn't expect any problems. But my supervisor who was handling the logistics, let me rot in a Chicago airport for 10 hours, then didn't seem to mind that I was starting my first shoot day after a 21 hour travel day on only 3 hours of sleep. Having to chase blue collar grunts around in a rental car, with little to no response from my phone calls, was not efficient at-all. The next trip out was even worse. My supervisor copy/pasted a schedule from the local contact that included shoot days for a local videographer, so that was a harbinger of things to come. One note in the schedule was one non work day was vaguely swapped with another day, so I asked my supervisor which day I wasn't working. He said both, and then of course absolutely nothing happened on the one day, except me waiting for an hour at a job site and having my call to the local contact ignored. Another day, I was never given time/location for a shoot on the schedule, so I called the local contact the day before, left a vm message and waited. That morning, I sat in my hotel room waiting for someone to tell me where I was going, etc. Finally my supervisor calls and asks me where I am. He says "they're waiting for you." It was absurd. The general work conditions in the home office were a bit off. I edited in a *very* small office room with 3 other videographers, and it appeared that we were expected to output work ahead of an established schedule, which led me to believe that our supervisor was getting bonuses based on our enhanced productivity. While I was still just getting the hang of the editing style and understanding where to locate footage, my supervisor would say to me "ideally this would be finished today," which isn't a deadline, but a passive aggressive way of saying, "you need to stay as late as it takes to finish this today." He did that to me twice, and then gave me a hard time when I didn't do so the 2nd time, even though a coworker told me the project wasn't even due yet. To top all that off, my supervisor kept calling me "buddy." Other oddities, the upper level staff at the company all seem to have a difficult upbringing story. One claimed in her schpiel to audiences she grew up poor in Buffalo, but when I asked her about it because I'm from there, she said she lived an hour from Buffalo until she was 8, then lived in Palm Beach, LOL. The CEO famously claims that the employees "own the company," which is odd, because there is no profit sharing and then I watched him, in a video, talk for 20 minutes to an audience of new staff about how they owned the trucks, the tools, the company, but then in the same breath say some VC guy "owned the company."

2.0
Nov 13, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The culture has a strong sense of identity. They make it clear what their values are. The company compensates top performers well. If you wholly embrace the role, you can make good money. Keep in mind though that not everyone can do this role. It is very difficult. But if you can put up with it, you'll do well financially.

Cons

No work-life balance. We had training meetings called on our own time at 6AM in the morning instead of using the prescheduled weekly training meetings to do it. People would call frequently needing things on my time off that were not urgent and could have waited. My biggest frustration was that you were not reimbursed for your travel expenses. I would drive an average of 3 hours per day and you don't get reimbursement for gas/ mileage- nothing. That means if you did not close a sale, you paid the company to work for them. Conflicting cultural messages. They are very proud that each employee gets equity in the company and say you are "owners". However, they micromanage everything you do, down to each word you say on a sales call. No exaggeration here. They literally recorded your whole meeting and they'd quiz you on the exact wording of every single step in the sales process. If I'm an "owner" and am paying the expenses of getting out here, I should do the job my way and not get micro managed.

1.0
Nov 10, 2025

Do not recommend

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good health insurance. Potential to earn a company car and gas card

Cons

Management are in meetings all day and can’t help train and mentor staff as needed. Corporate looks about employees and homeowners as pure numbers. There is no company culture on the local level. It’s production against sales instead of both working together. Scheduling department is awful. Company supplied leads aren’t qualified and are booked on opportunity only. Baltimore is the worst branch in the entire organization based on the numbers.

Viewing 34 - 36 of 479 Reviews

Glassdoor has 488 Groundworks reviews submitted anonymously by Groundworks employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Groundworks is right for you.