Innovative Interfaces, Inc reviews

Mass layoffs without any thought of staff expertise and importance to stated corporate goals. Lots of corporate double-speak without any substance in lieu of actual information. The executive management seems incredibly disconnected and completely untrustworthy. Most of the staff with domain knowledge have either been let go from arbitrary layoffs or have left of their own accord. The corporate HQ no longer has a shipping department nor even a receptionist. Visitors to the building are observed via a camera and greeted by harried and overworked staff as time allows. It's clear to anyone with eyes that they're planning further shuttering of the main office, but executive claims voice platitudes of "collaboration" and "communication", as though that's a problem in the ranks (and it isn't). There's also a few canned reviews getting added that seem to be an attempt to inflate the Glassdoor rating.

If I could magically go back to work at the III I started with years ago, I probably would. It wasn't a bad opportunity for a candidate straight out of library school, and have me lots of exposure to tech services issues and work. However, those days are sadly gone. And I want to be honest: even that "III of yore" was not totally amazing. If you were a librarian, the company did not offer any professional development opportunities (read, funds or time) in the field, which always had me scratching my head as to how I'd ever compete in the job market after leaving the place. Also, the path to "advancement" was murky at best, and seemed to shift review-to-review depending on your individual manager or the financial climate of the company. Some "promotions" seemed well-earned, others were long overdue, and others never came despite repeated, concerted efforts to rank up. It was confusing at best, hardly inspiring, and downright demoralizing at worst. Now, following the sale of the company by the founder/owner to holding companies in Q1 2012, the outlook has worsened considerably. Haphazard decision making by a new management team who may know software, but who know NOTHING about this very particular market, have the company I was once happy to work for in shambles. These decisions range the gamut from new, tiny cubicles without any privacy, to the purchase of two competitors, to abruptly changing the PTO policy, to opening a support office in India staffed with folks who don't know the market or the products well enough to be truly helpful, to beefing up the sales staffing as though a new library were being built every day. All these moves point to a pretty substantial misunderstanding of the customers, the employees, and the products themselves.