Pros
Free Tuesday lunch. Benefits are competitively priced.
Cons
As the title suggests, this review is a peak behind the public charade put on by Netsertive. The false narrative that this company portrays is crumbling by the day, and I feel it would be a disservice to those considering employment there and morally reprehensible if I did not share an honest assessment of my time as a “Netizens.” Let me describe where Netsertive came from. Founded by a handful of super smart people who were in the right place at the right time with a great idea, Netsertive was founded in 2009 around a novel Brand-To-Local SEO marketing strategy, patenting it, showing results in a horrific economy, touting an amazing “Startup Culture”, using said culture as a basis to severely underpay its employees, and grow headcount quickly through several rounds of investments. Note, nowhere did I mention “innovation” - there is none at Netsertive. In fact, the founding CTO, Paul Bock, left about a year ago out of frustration with the executive team’s lack of vision or innovation. Since his departure, it has been a continuous stream of talented employees jumping ship or being fired - many of whom were veterans or high-performers at the company. The problem, as another reviewer stated, is the complete lack of vision, strategy, or innovation at the company. Within the last year Netsertive hired a President, as the company's years of meandering has apparently been less-than-appealing to those investors who I’m sure are starting to wonder when they are going to see returns. The CEO’s message to the company about the reason for the installation of a president? “I’m going to focus on sales.” Problem is, the world has continued turning, marketing and advertising have too, and the same 9-year-old one-trick-patented-pony of SEO marketing with "keyword pods" isn’t appealing or performing anymore. How do I know this? How about the customers that are leaving Netsertive. Major retail customers. And what about those buying groups that are “Frenemies” at best? And then there’s the cash issue. I can’t tell you how many times bad news was couched by the executive team saying “Don’t worry, we have so much cash in the bank, we’re solid!” Until you’re not…. Within the past year Netsertive acquired Seattle-based Adtech firm, Mixpo, and put much of its employees into positions of management and leadership at Netsertive - including the Product team. I guess the thought was to inject fresh blood and innovation into the ailing patient, with the hope that the patient would make a turn for the better. Unfortunately, you can’t buy your way to strategy or innovation, but you CAN buy your way into a serious burn rate through that much-touted pile of cash in the bank, and in April 2018 Netsertive went through a sizable round of layoffs. How sizable? They collapsed the company from 2 buildings to 1, and laid off many of the former Mixpo employees. You also won’t see any of these employees commenting on the layoffs because they want to use Netsertive as a reference, and Netsertive offered to pay them a couple additional paychecks if they kept silent about it. I am in neither of these groups of people. Beyond the lack of strategy and innovation, there is also a severe lack of leadership. There are MANY managers, but very few leaders. Many of the managers are now engaging in self-preservation tactics, marginalizing (or firing) high performers and veterans in an attempt to secure their own positions on the sinking ship. Really, it’s a sad, sad story. A multi-year winner of the coveted “Triangle Best Places to Work” award (but hasn't won in in the past few years), Netsertive is now a dying professional services organization, over-selling its "tech" and hoping to get acquired for its customer portfolio (while that portfolio continues to shrink). That “tech” they are over-selling? It’s actually an army of under-paid entry-level account managers working feverishly in Excel spreadsheets, Smartsheets and copying/pasting to manually deploy marketing campaigns “at scale” - and billing this as “marketing automation.” Fortunately for technology workers in the Triangle (and unfortunately for Netsertive), the tech community in this area is surprisingly small, and the word is out. Ultimately we each make our own career decisions, and I don’t fault anyone who chooses to go work for Netsertive. But please, make some calls, ask around, do your homework, and make your decision fully informed and with eyes wide open.
