Leadership problem - Anonymous employee WillowTree Employee Review

1.0
29 Jan 2024
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Some of the client work is interesting and there is an opportunity to learn skills and pad your resume.

Cons

Once you spend a year or so here you realize that the main problem is the senior leadership. Most of them have been here since the company was much smaller and were not hired into their role with a proven track record of leading public companies (which let’s face it we are now). They have absolutely no qualifications for the role and are making it up as they go along. As such, the company has no direction. Every 3 months we get a new strategic initiative announced. When questioned 1:1, senior leaders often are unable to speak to any meaningful detail about this strategy. The c suite pretends they’re on the cutting edge of digital transformation when in fact they’re just parroting buzzwords and trying to ride industry trends. Promotion is not meritocratic but linked to whoever can suck up the most to the longtime leaders. How is anyone with any talent hired into this organization supposed to respect people with no ability who are for some reason leading them? Quality of work is unsurprisingly suffering as a result. Feels like this was a company started by engineers that became successful because of the quality of their work and used to attract top talent because of its great culture. That culture has now been ruined by an acquisition, layoffs, and the general tone deaf inability of the c suite to do anything about the fact that most of the employees distrust and dislike them. They ask for critical feedback of their leadership but don’t provide anonymous channels to do so besides a suggestions box that nobody reads, or take any action to do anything about the issues brought up. This contributes to the general sense of feeling like you’re being constantly lied to by leadership and have to maintain a facade of being satisfied at your job.

Explore other reviews about WillowTree

5.0
29 May 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great opportunity, take hirevue seriously

Cons

No cons, love this internship

3.0
29 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Lots of really nice, and smart people who are very collaborative and excited to share their knowledge. This is not a prestigious place to work, so I was a bit surprised by just how smart and competent people are at WillowTree or TELUS Digital, whatever our name is. The offices are great and the office culture is ridiculously good. Huge shoutout to the employees (it's def not upper management) who go out of their way to make the office culture great. Depending on what project you're on, it can be a pretty chill place to work. If you're early in your career and need experience, the variety of projects makes this a genuinely good opportunity.

Cons

The biggest con is the compensation. It's so terrible, and far below the industry standard that I don't really see how anyone could stay here long term. They don't give raises, no one is getting promotions. There's also quite a lot of restructuring going on, and very poor communication about it. Which is par for the course in the tech industry at this point, but worth noting. It feels relatively stable for now, but I really have trouble seeing how their tech services division is going to survive as AI decreases the cost to build software. Plus, tech services as part of TELUS Digital doesn't really make any sense long term. It's a contact center business with a bunch of people that randomly make expensive mobile apps? It seems to be making enough money for now to keep going, but I feel like that could change any moment.

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