I feel compelled to write this because I do not want anyone to make the same mistake I did by joining this company. I also want to be clear that the recent positive reviews written over the summer of 2016 were written or prompted by the very people who are responsible for the failures of this company; they wanted to try and disprove serious issues raised in prior reviews. Just scroll back to those reviews and you will see that what I am about to write is depressingly consistent.
This is a company and culture that exhibits all of the worst things you can imagine occurring in the workplace:
Egos put before clients: It is not possible to show up here, work hard and gain recognition; you are instead expected to stroke the egos of senior management at the expense of client service. We spend so much time playing politics and nowhere near enough time with our clients building relationships and selling work. Unsurprisingly, we are not respected by clients and are hemorrhaging money and talent.
Extremely high turnover: A different person is leaving every week, to the point where we no longer have enough resources to do the work we do have and at the same time do not have the money to hire new talent. No one is here long enough to develop institutionalized knowledge of how to do anything.
No training: since no one smart stays here even a year, everyone who joins is constantly re-learning things from scratch with no guidance from disengaged senior management. Junior people are left to fend for themselves when they join and at worst they will become the scapegoat when things on the project go wrong. I cannot condone a culture where the analyst on the team is somehow responsible for the success or failure of a whole project, and responsibility and accountability is pushed as far down the food chain as possible.
A place to learn bad habits: with rare exceptions, those who do well at this company do so by compromising their personal and professional ethics. I have seen team members start to back-stab, take credit for others work, say one thing and do another etc. because they have been taught that these behaviors get you ahead at Vermeer. Behavior like that would be squashed in any other professional environment.
Not real consulting: We are not thought partners with our clients, instead we bend over backwards out of fear of saying no to a client, which not only ends up compromising work quality / output but also leads to brutalizing work hours for the junior team for no purpose.
Work life ‘integration’: this is Vermeer’s code word for we expect you to work all day and all night. Senior management will frequently cite that Vermeer is an intense place and some people just cannot handle it. That is not the case. What they mean is they expect other people to do the work at whatever the personal cost.
No exit opportunities: contrary to what you may see on LinkedIn, the people who have left Vermeer to go on and do exciting things have done so because of their own network that they had prior to Vermeer. No one at Vermeer is being hired by their clients because our clients do not respect us and we do not spend enough time with them to build meaningful relationships.
Uneven work distribution: there are some people who work very hard at this company but they are taken advantage of by those who refuse to do anything. Frequently team managers leave their junior team in the office super later doing work while they check out for the night. The exceptions to this are vastly underpaid and should take their talents elsewhere so that Vermeer can no longer be held afloat by the few respectful employees.
Favoritism: If you are not part of the chosen club of ‘superstars’ here you will be at best sidelined and at worst fired. Being a ‘superstar’ is not based on your professional success or indeed professional potential, it is based on far more superficial qualities such as how attractive you are and even more concerning, how much you are willing to compromise your work ethic to bend to every whim of senior management.
Emotional not professional workplace: Decisions made at the top are emotionally rather than professionally driven, and those in a position of power are not only incompetent but also determined to sideline those that do not subscribe to their vision of how the company should operate.
If you are a skilled professional, stay clear of this place. The best thing that can happen is that the company folds and Kantar picks up the people who are actually good and understand professional integrity, and uses their talents to better purpose elsewhere.
