Formlabs Customer Support reviews

- Management turn over was horrible. I worked there for 3 years and had around 7 managers. Each time I was essentially, "starting over," in my career with them. At least 4 quit. - Underpaid. Was told, "snacks in the kitchen were part of your compensation package." - Business habits became focused on making sales rather than providing a working product. This was the most depressing part for me. Getting underpaid and having yogurt pretzels in the kitchen became a running joke after a while. What became really hard was management telling Customer Service to tell customers the printer would be released on a certain day, knowing full well they would not make that deadline. And then doing it with all released products. Check the Formlabs forums, it was what Formlabs was known for among its own user community. What was so terrible was lying to customers. The Customer Support agents employed by Formlabs were underpaid and knew it, yet loved helping customers make their business goals and projects happen. Agents were openly frustrated with management for putting them in a hard position, and management essentially said, "oh well, that's what startups are" - Hearing that the company was going through, "growing pains," and that's why it had high turn-over, underpaid people, and delivered half-baked products was why I left. This just get's old, especially when there's no change.

-Low pay across the board with little to no opportunities for salary increases. I worked here for 1.5 years and wasn't given an opportunity for a review/salary negotiation. -Poor business practices cause a constant influx of justifiably unhappy customers. Endless shipping delays, warehouse and logistics issues, ending support of products way too early, poor quality control with products arriving broken or incorrect regularly. I felt embarrassed every day working for Formlabs with the amount of things we had to apologize for that were outside of our control. The customer facing teams seem to be the only ones who hear directly how this impacts the end users and upper management doesn't hear and/or doesn't care. -Unrealistic expectations for productivity. Systems used to measure metrics (which your reviews and salary increases are based on) are constantly broken with nothing in place to fix them. -Hours are 9-6 instead of the standard 9-5 with the expectation that you take a 1 hour lunch break. The majority of people are unable to do in order to keep up with the unrealistic expectations for workload, which inevitably leads to burnout. It's hard to maintain a good work/life balance due to this. -Poor leadership: heads of the department quit within weeks of each other and weren't replaced until months later. People put in place to take over for their roles have little management experience and it shows. -Customer base consists of engineers, dentists, designers, and education. Huge parts of their work relies on their printers, and when they break down they are very upset about it. You definitely need a thick skin to work in this department. This job is good for recent college grads and people new to the Boston area who need to gain experience in order to go work somewhere else; not good for a long term career.