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Spiceworks Ziff Davis

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Sinking Ship - Anonymous employee Spiceworks Ziff Davis Employee Review

2.0
Dec 19, 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Take reviews prior to 2015 with a grain of salt. It's a much different place. Free snacks, drinks and coffee may have been awesome perks a decade ago, but are now a dime a dozen in Austin. Incredibly nice people to work with.

Cons

Zero communication across teams. Simple projects take several months due to lack of communication. Lack of training for new hires. Growing attrition rate at an alarming pace. People are promoted due only to length of employment, not merit. Managers haven't received formal training, but upper management has made an effort to change this. Better late than never. Morale is incredibly low since the layoffs, and it doesn't seem to be getting better. Work flexibility is pretty much non-existent if you work outside Dev. Can't work from home or come in late. The "mandatory" Friday meetings aren't necessary. We've all been asking for them to be moved - you'd have higher turnout.

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Spiceworks Ziff Davis Response
9y
I'm sorry to see your views on Spiceworks have turned so negative. I'm also disappointed that I don't think we've had a chance to discuss these in person. As always, I'd welcome the chance for you to stop by or send me an email so we can get to the root of the issues here, resolve them, and get to a better outcome. I'd like to address a number of your points and what we're doing about them. We've discussed most of these at our company meetings but it always bears repeating as may not have gotten it right yet. 1) Communication across teams takes a lot of work. We've put in place OKRs, and RevOps and Product Ops are venues to surface cross-team communication. Beyond that we expect our managers to be able to talk to each other and sort this out -- if this isn't happening the only to fix it is to know about it. I don't have ESP. 2) Training for new hires varies by department, role and level within those departments so it's not fair to see "lack of training". That said, we can ALWAYS do more and do better training so it'd help to know which team you are on. 3) We've certainly had a lot of turnover and change this year. People have left for a variety of reasons. We're also hiring amazing folks who have skills and experiences aligned with where we are going and the huge opportunity in front of us. 4) Have you discussed work flexibility with your manager? We've been accommodating within reason for every situation I'm aware of. 5) The company meetings (which are usually on Friday) are in our view a necessary part of communicating across a company of our size. In 2017 we'll revisit the timing. If you have suggestions on improving the content please let me know. Regarding your last point on "begging for a change" it'd be great to know what you really mean there. We've gone through a lot of change this year as we realign to make sure we're delivering on our purpose to "connect everyone IT" for the next 10 years and beyond. The results are starting to show as we've shared our financial and operating progress in Q4. I'm seeing a lot of excitement with the IT pros we serve, the tech companies that advertise with us and many of our Spiceworkers and I'm personally very excited for 2017. I'd welcome the chance for us to talk 1:1 to see how we can help you out and get you back to the optimism you had before 2016.

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Cons

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