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Inventive Group

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Inventive Group Reviews

3.4

50% would recommend to a friend

(20 total reviews)

Andrew Siemer

34% approve of CEO

31% positive business outlook

Inventive Group has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 20 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Inventive Group employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

20 reviews
1.0
15 Feb 2024

Get Stuff Done, Exploitatively!

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

They sent me a t-shirt.

Cons

The place has a weird vibe because they want you to feel like a full time employee while literally paying you by the minute. Most employees are contractors so there's no health insurance, PTO, 401k, or any other benefits. It feels like you are being taken advantage of...because you are. However, my biggest problem was the dishonesty and the complete disregard for my contract. It started off on an odd note. I applied to the job with a rate that was within their own posted range. Then after going through the entire interview process, they told me the pay range was a mistake and asked if I was willing to start at a lower rate. HR offset the news by telling me a wonderful tale about how my 6 month contract would almost certainly be extended, and at that point they could give me the 10% they were paying to the company I was hired through. In fact, I was told that the end date was, "simply a reminder to transition you into our system, Gusto!" Then about halfway through my contract I got pulled into a surprise meeting with the COO. He said they ran out of work, blaming it all on the client, and I was told to stop working immediately. They didn't want to off-board me, and he would give me weekly status updates (spoiler alert: he emailed me the following week and I never heard from him again). I became unemployed overnight. It was also right before the holidays which was a nice touch. Even worse was the fact that I was the only developer that was sidelined. The company hired too many developers at once for the project I was on (another management problem I won't even get into), and I assumed we all got put on hold temporarily since they "ran out of work." But I still had access to everything, so I could see that the other devs were still working full days. Even the dev hired after me was still working. There were comments in Slack from PM's saying things like "plenty of tickets on the board for the devs to pick up!" I looked at the Jira board frequently over the next few months and it was always full of tickets. It felt absolutely horrible to watch everyone working while I'm lied to and wondering how I'm going to pay my rent. Even better was when I was searching for a new job and saw them post my position while my contract was still technically active. I would understand if I was a bad employee, but I am good at what I do and I worked really hard for them. So I'm not sure why I was singled out and screwed over, but this was the worst experience of my 15 year career. FYI, at the time of this review my contract was scheduled to end over two weeks ago. This place is so poorly run that I still have access to everything and have not heard a word from anyone. It's been 3 months. They haven't even bothered to officially end my contract.

avatar
Inventive Group Response
2y
I read this and wanted to apologize for the misunderstanding. We still don't have enough work for more web developers today, but in hindsight, we've waited too long for more signed contracts before reaching out to you. We always hoped to get more work and ping you, but that hasn't happened. We left you in all the systems as a positive thing, expecting work to appear and us to reengage. I'm sorry you viewed it all differently. I totally understand, given our radio silence. The "plenty of tickets on the board for the devs to pick up" you've seen is relative, of course - plenty for the folks left on that team, but it's a smaller team now. We were blindsided by two projects stopping without warning at the slowest point of the year. We haven't hired more web developers since then, nor have we interviewed any. There is an "evergreen" job posting, but it is not something we're actively hiring. We expect that to change in the next month. Obviously, you're unhappy and unlikely to want to return now, so of course, we'll off-board you from everything. I just wanted to apologize for your experience and wish you the best.
1.0
30 Oct 2023

STAY AWAY

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The Director of Recruiting, Alyssa, is a shining star. She cares for you deeply and wants to see you succeed. She goes to bat for you and provides you tools and guidance. She's incredibly authentic in who she is and she sees (and cares about) the human inside every candidate she interviews and hires. She's really the only positive part of this org.

Cons

Where do I begin? This place is an absolute mess. And if you're getting hired as a project manager, get ready to join the most disheartening and messy position there is. James, the COO, and Andy, the CEO, are both incredibly poor leaders. The COO especially, who would be your direct supervisor. They do not know how to lead and they absolutely do not know how to manage. And they're incredibly belittling and mean on top of it. They'll drop you in, with zero training and experience, and expect you to read their minds and know what to do right off the bat. They won't walk you through I9 processes or any real 'first day' kickoff, they won't have any onboarding scheduled, they won't answer questions, they won't give you any support. They literally expect someone to come in and immediately know how to build their own onboarding schedule, training materials, metrics, and somehow know how to organize everything too on day one, when they haven't learned anything about the company, the work that they do, and what the expectations are. It's truly laughable that they expect someone to read their minds and take off with absolutely nothing from the get go. And they'll also immediately pull you off any meetings or shadowing with your team too so you can't learn from them either. If you try to ask for structure or an onboarding plan or any training at all, you'll get talked down to and made to feel stupid. Good luck getting any support or time to learn. Two days. They gave me two days to figure things out with zero training and guidance and then decided I was the wrong fit. They wasted my time and theirs. When the COO says in the first interview that his policy is to "hire fast, fire faster" you better listen to that red flag and RUN. This place has incredibly high turnover and impossibly high standards with zero help or support. You could go to Target and be given more than two days to be taught and learn. If you go in with an enthusiastic attitude, that's a red flag to them. They don't want a willingness to learn, they want someone to just know everything right away. It's truly bonkers. They're great at being mean. The COO is not professional in how he acts and he's looking for a way to make you feel awful about yourself. He'll jab you with awful remarks about who you are as a person. He told me that he wanted to "change my personality," as if he hadn't interviewed me multiple times and gotten to know who I was. There's no encouragement from him. Seriously, stay away. If he's your manager, expect to just feel like you don't matter because you don't. I was so bummed about this and didn't even want to write this review, but I felt it was important for the people that are interviewing to know the truth. Never in my life have I experienced something so unprofessional from a company. This place is an absolute mess. You'll feel encouraged and happy and supported in your interview process but expect a full 180 from the COO and CEO. I'm really upset that I even have to write this poor review because I truly was just so excited to join this team, but it needs to be out there so the next person can truly know what they're getting into, because it's not good.

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Glassdoor has 30 Inventive Group reviews submitted anonymously by Inventive Group employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Inventive Group is right for you.