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Telmate reviews

2.6

42% would recommend to a friend

(3 total reviews)

Richard Torgersrud

48% approve of CEO

38% positive business outlook

Reviews by job title

3 reviews

Reviews about "Compensation"

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1.0
Jan 18, 2017

I should have believed the reviews..

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-I actually like what this company does. They're adding competition to a market that is too easy to exploit and offering great solutions to people that other companies might hesitate to market towards. -Onboarding was nice- swag pack, Telmate U course was helpful to understand the business and well done -Rank and file employees are nice -Company is solid and appears to be growing. No fear of layoffs or shutdown. -Paid vacation from christmas to new years -Paid healthcare

Cons

-The HR department is woefully understaffed and it shows. The HR dashboard websites are all out of date and nobody even got a schedule of company holidays for 2017. The VP of HR position is open and there is no leadership whatsoever to regulate company culture. -Absolutely toxic management. You will not believe the behavior of things you see here from higher ups. Yelling, screaming, the works. Extremely unprofessional. -Due to being associated with an undesirable industry, I believe they have "settled" on lower quality talent rather than pay a premium to attract great people to work with jails. -The CEO does not even work on site...terrible example! Totally out of touch with the home office. He doesn't even live in SF. -Only the SF office truly gets the advertised perks. Notice the lack of happy fun pics from the call center or LA office. -Not a great salary, no bonus program, no profit sharing and lots of cost cutting. The owners are multi millionaires but your travel and expense reports will be dirt cheap standard. I expect in time the free meals will disappear too, they have already been reduced in frequency. -Not really a tech company. Most of their business just comes from inmates placing calls.

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Telmate Response
9y
Responding to a review such as this one is challenging. On the one hand, you felt strongly enough about the company to take the time to write this review and I appreciate that. It appears that your personal situation in the company is not very positive and I wish that were not the case. I really take it personally when people do not feel they are working in a positive supportive environment. On the other hand, there are some specific items in your review that are not quite accurate and I would like to make sure they are addressed - Yes, I would agree we need more resources in HR. We are actively looking for additional help. We have many job openings throughout the company. When needed we have also hired outside groups to help us with HR tasks - such as hiring. A number of managers and employees have created a "culture club" in order to help improve and drive culture at the company. They are always looking for more people to join them. I would recommend talking to our lead recruiter who would love assistance with the employee-led initiative - I am a member of the management board of Telmate since I joined the company a year ago. While we are not perfect, I have never once seen or heard any yelling or screaming while I have been at the company. There were stories from before I joined about more aggressive styles of management, but there has been tremendous change over the last year+. -You are correct, the CEO does not actively work in the office. His function to the company is more similar to a Chairman of the Board. Providing guidance and direction, while the rest of the management team runs the day-to-day operations. -Each office (we have four main offices) has a different set of perks. I will work with our teams to get more pictures posted from the other offices. -We recently went through an exhaustive initiative to normalize job titles and positions. Along with that we performed (with an outside firm) and detailed salary review for all of our positions. We created salary bands for every position in the company and adjusted salaries that were not accurate. I am not clear on the comment about our free meals. They have been exactly the same and have not changed. We also allow each manager to take their entire team out to a monthly lunch for team-bonding. If you had a specific issue with an expense report, I would be happy to look into it in more detail if you would like. - The tech company comment is the most confusing. We work on more technology at Telmate than at almost any other company where I have worked. We build custom Android tablets, modify the Android Kernal, create native IOS & Android applications, build scalable and custom WebRTC video and SIP calling technologies. We build custom hardware solutions and scalable SaaS based management and billing tools. We use image machine learning to detect contraband and more more very hard technical challenges. I would love to discuss this more with you in detail. We have also just begone a management training and coaching program for all leaders in the technology organization (which I run) and hopefully can expand that to the entire company. Again, I apologize if you are not having a positive experience at Telmate. I would love the opportunity to help to make it better for you.
5.0
Aug 11, 2015

Company with amazing potential

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Great tech. This company actually builds things from software to hardware. They use the lastest web technologies. - Good employees: My peers are really motivated and skilled. - The company is profitable and privately owned. In the bay area, it is really rare. - There are perks like lunches and others. - stable company and competitive wages.

Cons

- A bit disorganized at times. However, management is making progress in managing work. - no stock options.

5.0
Jul 17, 2014

Innovative environment, excellent work-life balance!

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

A lot less trendy of an industry than most you can find in San Francisco; but Telmate is so forward-thinking, you'll hardly notice. Management is progressive when approaching every aspect of the business -- from the technology itself to the slick work environment to their respect for work-life balance.

Cons

Salary is not really competitive for a major city.

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