Looking at the reviews, I expect the majority of the positive comments come from the management, their friends and family members as many OM employees are not satisfied with the company.
I really enjoyed working at OpenMarket as my colleagues were friendly and supportive, unfortunately, I cannot say the same about my manager who seemed to be scared of expressing any form of criticism against the leadership. I completely lost respect towards them as they were timid and unable to defend their own team.
Many senior managers seem to be indecisive and lack industry experience, which is reflected in their poor decision making. Majority of them are located in Seattle and are completely out of touch with the situation in Pune, Guadaralaja and London.
Furthermore, there is a dangerous trend among the leadership team to employ their ex-colleagues/friends who seem equally incompetent.
The company puts an emphasis on diversity, however, the same individuals keep being promoted, some of them got promoted 2-3 times in a year and the majority of them were men. Unfortunately, women don’t get much recognition at OM, especially those who are vocal and dare to criticise the leadership. I also don’t see much diversity across the leadership team- the majority of them are white Americans.
Although one of the core values of OpenMakret is ‘be authentic’, not many managers are living up to this standard. The CEO and the management surround themselves with Yes-men only and any form of criticism sooner or later will be punished.
‘Value people’ is another questionable core value of OpenMarket- people should be valued in various ways, paying for drinks and pizza once per month is not enough. At OpenMarket many employees are underpaid for the amount of work they do. The most ‘lucky’ individuals end up doing a job of 2-3 people.
The work culture leaking from the senior management is quite toxic, there is lots of backstabbing and politics that ‘spill’ over the middle managers and regular employees, even those in technical roles.
The old-fashioned and not fit for purpose processes and systems may hinder your efficiency. If your laptop doesn’t function properly, it takes ages to get a new one. Moreover, HR, payroll and recruitment processes are very time-consuming and complicated as a result finalising employee’s promotions might take months.
If you have any pay-related issues you may end up emailing multiple individuals located in various locations before anyone solves your problem as the HR/Payroll departments are redistributed across the globe.
There is a non-existent budget for personal development, only a few of my colleagues were able to attend some conferences last year, most of us couldn’t due to a very tight budget. Nevertheless, some teams (Sales, Marketing) seem to have enough money to attend fancy events.
The attrition rate is rocketing high and I have never seen in my whole career so many colleagues departing within such a short space of time. HR claims that this is normal and such an attrition level is an industry-standard. To make it worse, many of those who have left were never replaced. The recruitment team doesn’t employ new people, they just fill the gaps.
