Great cause and idea, disappointing execution - Anonymous employee Seven Bridges Employee Review

2.0
10 May 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great and humane idea and goal. Good accounting department - always helpful and friendly. A couple of really great and competent people mostly in engineering department. Nice offices. Free lunch.

Cons

No leadership of any kind in Belgrade office . Top management in Belgrade only effort is to stay in the position of power. Absolutely no decision making in Belgrade office, no one was able or willing to take responsibility. No work process or methodology created confusion on everyday level. Management was proud that there was no official on-boarding process for new employees. Instead it was every (wo)man for themself. Incompetent and slow HR - slow dissemination of information, did not react to complaints. Incompetent middle management as a result of forced promotion of best engineers to team leads without any training or soft skill assessment by HR department. Absolutely no idea on what were the responsibilities or expectations for any of the positions in the company, especially mid/high management and C level. Money from the second round of investments was spent like there is no tomorrow by a privileged group of few. Previous CEO is expert in her domain but does not know how to run a company. Could not focus on the market or clients, was all over the place which translated to the whole company and employees. Complete disconnect between the country offices and absence of information sharing. General company agenda or business direction is very very vague despite frequent pointless all hands meetings during which most of the people sit and chat on their laptops. C level tried to establish a transparent communication while actually hiding important information from the employees. Company culture was to hire "stars" no matter how bad or non existent their soft skills were, meaning 95% percent of people had to tolerate the tyranny of prima donnas. After a rough financial patch a lot of people left which created an atmosphere of despair with zero effort from Belgrade management to even try to mitigate the situation. People were promoted for 2 reasons - to keep them from leaving the company or when their superior leaves the company or moves to another position. Company was not ready for the large influx of new people which created a lot of idle time. Toxic environment. Your day-to-day livelihood very much so depends on your direct boss. Positive feedback is non existent, most of the important stuff you can only hear on the corridors and through backchannels. Few selected employees get all the benefits. Incompetent sales department.

Explore other reviews about Seven Bridges

5.0
11 Jul 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Built many bridges. Some big, some small.

Cons

Maybe, some more bridges would have been nice

1.0
30 Sept 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I went there with a friend, and the entire design team both stateside and in Serbia was great. I still talk with them 2 years later, after working with them for only 5 months. My salary was very good. Great benefits.

Cons

Literally everything else. It was such as shitshow that I didn't actually do any real design work the entire time. Most of my day was dedicated to helping a PM with a powerpoint deck to convice the company heads that data governance of health information was a thing, and in fact was very very important. We had plans on standardizing the products once the merger had taken place, but never had the chance. We had no formal processes in place, and we were working on structuring the team in a way that would make more sense and allow us to implement processes (with me as the director domestically, and a seperate director for the European team) but we were laid off before our proposal was actually due. It became clear early on that all of the equity would go to the venture people (who were clearly wealthy already) and we would just work for them. Our CTO, who was a champion for UX was laid off a few months in when the venture people decided they wanted to pick the executive team. There was a sudden layoff of nearly all domestic engineers, but we were assured that we would not be laid off. Sure enough, a couple months later, the entire US design team was laid off with no warning and a small severence. This happened before we could give them our proposal for our team structure, and working processes, which makes me think they never cared in the first place. I woke up to panicked texts from my stateside coworkers saying they had been axed, and had just enough time to alert my Serbian colleagues to the situation before my access was cut off. They had to hunt me down via my personal email to lay me off later that day. We were laid off right after a bunch of huge companies had big layoffs in january of 2023, and for me personally, right before a big Disney trip we had planned for a year and just gotten the bill for. And this was the second time in my career I was laid off just prior to being promoted. It left me devastated and now in my late 40's with lots of leadership experience but no leadership titles. I joined because I wasn't growing at my previous company, and they left me with very little growth opportunity in a job market where salaries were dropping. I should never have joined them. Now they are Velsera, and by the looks of the reviews, they haven't changed much.

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