Universal Mind reviews

Clients. Agency work is tough. Regardless of how good a company Universal Mind is, at the end of the day most employee's experience will be determined more by the client they are working for. No matter how good your sales or account team are, there will always be difficult, boring, frustrating, etc. clients. Hopefully there are great ones too, but depending on which clients you get your experience here can be very different. Change. The change of pace in the market is also hard on some people. Many folks love particular points in the company's history when we did X or Y, but our client's needs and the market are constantly changing, and to stay afloat Universal Mind has to change with it. To really have a full career here you have to join to be a technology consultant; not an iOS designer or Android architect or any other specific thing that can be commoditized and go away in five years. Some people hate that and want to do the same thing forever, and in that case agencies aren't a good fit. Maturity. In the past UM was a company full of young men in technology, and it's company events in those days reflected that culture and included a lot of drinking. In the past three years since I've been here I've seen a much more mature and grown-up Universal Mind. Today most people have a great time at company events without embarrassing themselves, but not everyone. Enterprise-centric work. Enterprises are more stable than start-ups, so they're attractive to agencies - they sign bigger checks, sign longer engagements, and are much more likely to pay. Enterprises also do less "exciting" cutting edge work than startups. If you want to make a neat IoT toy like a water bottle that tracks what you drink, Universal Mind probably isn't going to get that client. If you want to re-architect or design a customer service portal that 7,000 people around the world rely on to do their jobs every day and get it done inside of a complicated large company, Universal Mind is likely to have what you're looking for. Some people hate that kind of work and can handle the instability of start-ups better than others. Bench time / self-management. When we don't have client work to keep the entire staff busy, full time folks are "on the bench" and asked to contribute to internal projects, support sales and marketing, or otherwise spend their time productively for the company. Some folks are not good at managing themselves or taking initiative in times of ambiguity and would prefer to have a steady stream of work set up for them and UM, as an agency, can't deliver that.

Poor management of costs associated with running a consulting business, with some ridiculous growth ideas. This has led to laying off full time employees as soon as they were on the bench, which is why I recommend simply going in as an independent contractor. If there is the idea of "keeping up with the Joneses" in the business world, UM suffers from this greatly. Copious amounts of money spent on branding, kitschy open offices, and even a failed offshore department that *actually competed directly* with its own USA employees. This was the start of the downward spiral one can see in reviews - a consistent effort to grow the company financially at the cost of its most important resource - its talented senior developers and designers. Feels like a body shop. Constantly trying to figure out how they fit into the market with re-branding, new vision statements, and other fluff that ultimately doesn't lead to better quality but sounds good in a sales presentation. No career growth. Your title will likely change throughout your career, but you won't really have any meaningful change in responsibilities. "Fun" alcohol infused off-sites and "team building" activities.