Pros
Great location and refurbished office space right in the heart of downtown Denver on the 16th Street mall. There are plenty of bars, shops and restaurants to frequent for coffee, lunch or happy hour. As a full time employee you will be offered a good salary and benefits package that includes healthcare coverage and 401K with a match. If you’re lucky, you might be eligible for a discretionary annual bonus. The culture is a work in progress and they claim to be focused on delivery. The office environment feels like a startup within a much larger and well-funded organization. Most of your co-workers are pretty nice and there is a laid back feel with a casual dress code. They provide lunch or breakfast each Friday. They do monthly all hands meetings to update employees on company performance and hold focus groups a couple times per year to identify potential room for improvement. If you’re self-motivated you’ll feel pretty busy and will do some meaningful work in digital marketing, development, product or analytics. If you’re not self-motivated you might be quite bored and feel there is a lack of direction.
Cons
Overall, HR at this company is here to look out for the company, not the employee. The healthcare benefits are good, but not cheap. If you’re planning on covering more than yourself on the company’s healthcare package be prepared to have a sizable chunk of your salary cut into. HR has been approached multiple times about correcting this or offering some lower cost options and they have done nothing. The same goes for the 401K package. It’s obvious they have gone for the lowest bidder and have mediocre investment options because of this. It’s a good thing there is a match. The culture can feel a bit like a high school popularity contest and there are some small cliques that tend to congregate together. This has caused some favoritism and depleted morale. There is little room for advancement and zero accountability in this office, especially with the development team. A small group of very dedicated people contribute at a high level and deliver, but across departments people show up to work late, contribute next to nothing in meetings, take long lunches and leave early on a consistent basis. This is not in line with a culture of delivery. Considering this is primarily a development shop it is worth noting there have been four development directors in a little under four years. Each director has had their own way of doing things and this has contributed to frequent and significant turnover in the department. Once again, this is not in line with a culture of delivery. Another source of frustration for the digital office is the database team is isolated from them in a different office and state and they do not deliver at the same pace or have the same reporting lines as the digital team. Communication with them relies on email or the occasional conference call. The guy in charge of this team runs the department like he is an overlord and his team will do nothing without his approval. Get used to the word escalate because no-one wants to interface with this guy.