Blackhawk Network reviews

The leadership (starting from the top) come from the retail world and are extremely narrow-minded when it comes to comp, benefits and staying competitive. The product offerings are low margin too, and without significant growth in a saturated market, the outlook for this company is bleak. Acquisitions and thus expansion into digital space (such as CashStar and GiftCards.com) have provided much needed relief, but this growth is organic and not sustainable. The senior leadership starting from HR to Network/Operations are all LONG term employees, prejudiced in their thinking and are causing suffocation - the team needs to be hiring newer leaders to provide much-needed fresh lens to reinvent. The next big area is Silverlake - their model of offshoring everything to recover their investment does not behoove any self-respecting talent to stay back. Bringing in Silverlake consultants into leadership roles in product management and technology leadership (recently-departed short-lived CTO was a Silverlake exec) has been a disaster. Transformation hasn't really worked. The first sign of COVID resulted in employees taking a 20% pay cut (across what is already lower than market comp), without a consideration to find alternatives. Competitors are launching products like lottery much faster than us. Toxic engineering leadership (bringing back and promoting tech leaders who have ZERO empathy or social skills, folks with known ethics/HR issues), etc. are all bad signs that prevent quality engineers from joining the team or delivering.