Pros
Executive leadership is excellent. The CEO and COO have done a tremendous job growing the company over the last few years. They have been proactive with communication and helped keep employees abreast, engaged, and motivated during the pandemic. Kudos!
Cons
There is a lack of strong leadership within IT group and it has led to a big gap between the company and department culture. Employee morale is very low and people engage in backchannel chatter due to frustrations with the senior management. There have been situations with the middle managers being terminated and his direct reports not being notified of the change. In some cases it has taken multiple days for employees to realize their manager is no longer with the company. How indifferent is the management to not have the courtesy to notify the staff if their manager is let go? There is also a lot of turnover, both voluntary or involuntary. There are cases involving individuals that are promoted and within months they are deemed as not good enough to do the jobs. Management is not a good judge of talent and their approach is very reactive every step of the way. IT leaders talk about innovation but they are not interested in hiring proper talent to build new technology. Their idea of innovation is to have a team in India build low-tech, cheap solutions and market it as a groundbreaking achievement. Competitors of Ares are lightyears ahead of their IT capabilities.