6 Oct 2016
Forward Financing Response
9yThank you for your review and acknowledging some of the perks and good things we offer employees (weekly lunches, flexible work hours, etc). There are many more you didn’t list such as gym memberships, monthly outings, etc, which I think are also important to highlight.
As CEO, I would like to address your headline calling Forward Financing a “sweatshop.”
We have regular office hours from 9 until 6pm (or 8:30am to 5:30pm for some teams). Most everyone works during those hours. There are a few times during the moth (month end, working on a specific deal, etc) where certain people or teams work a bit later.
By no means is Forward Financing a sweatshop or unfair working environment (I would reference the other positive reviews from employees – and, yes, those are previous or current employees, not me or other managers posting them).
One change we did make recently, which you might not have been privy to, is that we added 10 or so “skeleton work days” where we have significantly reduced teams that either work partial days in the office or at home. This has more than doubled the number of holidays we provide our employees and has been a great benefit the past 6 months.
We also encourage employees to hit the gym during lunch or other downtimes during the day when possible. We pay for gym memberships for all employees and find many of them taking advantage of this benefit.
I am sorry you did not have a great experience working at Forward Financing. Hopefully you’ve had a chance to experience other corporate environments since leaving Forward Financing to better understand customary employer working hours and expectations.
I wish you the best in your career and future endeavors,
Justin Bakes
CEO
Forward Financing