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Telmate reviews

2.6

42% would recommend to a friend

(67 total reviews)

Richard Torgersrud

48% approve of CEO

38% positive business outlook

Telmate has an employee rating of 2.6 out of 5 stars, based on 67 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Telmate employee rating is 32% below average for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

67 reviews
1.0
May 4, 2017

Could it get any worse?

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The technology. The location of the office.

Cons

Crazy place. Nepotism. Favoritism. Back-stabbing. Lack of direction. Lack of consistency. Lack of caring. There are a few people that are in tight. The rest...watch your step and your back as you run out the door.

5.0
Feb 26, 2017

My Experience in the Company

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I realize that some may think that a five-star overall rating is extreme. As indicated by my review title, I'm going to focus on my current personal experience in the company. From my perspective, I'm having a five-star experience. I love the work I'm doing and the people I work with. Many co-workers have become good friends. I've been able to work on some fairly advanced technology and have learned a lot. I've been able to create opportunities for myself and succeed on those projects. The physical work environment, to me, is excellent, as many of the reviews of Telmate have commented. My work/life balance is good. I work hard but have ample time for my private life. The culture and values of the company are in transition. From my perspective, we're headed in the right direction. There's good camaraderie in the office and at off-site gatherings.

Cons

I don't think of this as a negative, although some might ... that is, at times, it's necessary to figure out our my way to grow and learn professionally. Telmate uses quite a large array of technologies, so there's a lot of opportunities to learn new things and advance my knowledge.

avatar
Telmate Response
9y
Thank you for your feedback about your experience working at Telmate. We value all feedback, both positive and negative. I appreciate that you mention that this feedback is specific directly to your experience and understand that other people might have different experiences. I also agree that we are in a positive transition period. I am glad to see that the hard work and dedication of Telmate's employees is paying off. Transparency is an important value to me. I will continue to put in place process and work on a culture that embraces transparency.
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.

avatar
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.
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Glassdoor has 67 Telmate reviews submitted anonymously by Telmate employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Telmate is right for you.