employer cover photo
employer logo
employer logo

Sandstorm Design

Is this your company?

Sandstorm Design Reviews

4.4

86% would recommend to a friend

(27 total reviews)

Sandy Marsico

89% approve of CEO

77% positive business outlook

Sandstorm Design has an employee rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars, based on 27 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Sandstorm Design employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media and communication industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

27 reviews
1.0
12 Dec 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The non-management people there are great. Just a great group of young, smart, talented folks. The technical managers there are some of the best of the best that I've worked with.

Cons

This agency is behind the time. The lack of concrete processes were alarming. The lack of vision, point of view or best practice on how to approach responsive websites (as an example) is also alarming. Sandstorm Design was unlike anything I've ever experienced at a digital agency. When you have a PM state to you just push out the development work regardless of the quality, that is a huge red flag. Seriously, what digital agency worth their salt does that? What another commenter stated about the CEO Sandy is true, in terms of the backhanded criticism. She is loud, rude, arrogant, confusing at times, disingenuous, very condescending, and unwilling to admit when she is wrong. The way she screams at her employees is unfair and not appreciated. It was sad to watch people sit there and just take her wrath and not defend themselves, especially when she was the one in the wrong. She withholds important information received from the client from the team working to solve the clients problems, only to throw the information in their face after they present something to her that misses the mark. That would never happen though if Sandy would reveal the information that she was privy to to her team before the fact instead of after. Do yourself a favor and don't bother working at this place. You'll end up being overworked, stressed out, confused as hell, and miserable. It will do nothing for your career and due to the poor quality of the work that gets produced, you wouldn't bother putting it on your portfolio site anyway. Word to the wise. Stay away from this place.

1.0
18 Feb 2018

It isn’t what it’s seems

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

• Non-management is an amazing group of smart and talented people. • There is lots of food and some fun activities.

Cons

• The “amazing culture” thing is a facade. • Many are overworked and under-compensated. • With no actual training, you’re still expected to know everything. • When there is a problem, the answer is often “Well, it is worse other places.” • Ageism is very prominent. • This place is OBSESSED with billable hours. • The owner does not know how to run a business and only hears what she wants to hear. • It is located in Ravenswood and will never leave.

3.0
4 Dec 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people. As a Designer, I learned a lot working with developers in-house for the first time in my career. I definitely grew into a more confident web designer by getting experience designing responsive websites while learning UX/UI best practices from the talented Dev team.

Cons

Sandstorm’s overall processes were the most difficult/frustrating I’d experienced in my five years of agency work. I struggled with the inconsistencies and hour-obsessive culture my entire time there. Creative work suffers due to the small amount of hours budgeted to complete a project. This is the only place I’ve worked that doesn’t believe in Creative Briefs or any sort of upfront creative discussions/brainstorming team meetings. As a Designer, you don’t get to work with a Creative team on coming up with multiple ideas for a project simply because all of the clients’ budgets are too low. The Account Managers don’t invite team members to any upfront, informative client meetings in an effort to save billable hours on their project/not go over budget, but this in turn leads to the team being out of the loop throughout the rest of the project. Also, it’s in Ravenswood and will never leave Ravenswood.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 27 Reviews

Glassdoor has 33 Sandstorm Design reviews submitted anonymously by Sandstorm Design employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Sandstorm Design is right for you.