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Accelerate Digital Agency

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CEO is the Problem - Anonymous employee Accelerate Digital Agency Employee Review

1.0
23 Jun 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

It's fun if you enjoy wondering if you'll be paid the next time around

Cons

Where do I even start? Brad, the CEO, is the root cause of all problems in this highly unorganized agency. If someone else was in charge, this would be a very different company and place to work for. For starters, he will completely overpromise and lie about how much work there will be, how you'll have all these opportunities for promotion and how great the company is. From talking to other employees, he does this with every new hire to get them excited about working with the company. Don't be fooled - it's a clever ploy to get people in the door and get hands on a project for however long that lasts. Then you get to deal with constant payment issues. Nothing like wondering where your paycheck is, right? When confronting him, he will avoid you entirely or come up with excuses and use whatever tactics he can to pacify you for the time being until he figures out how to come up with the money to pay you. While all of this is going on, you will be expected to work whatever hours necessary to meet a deadline that has been entirely miscalculated, even after you get home. As someone else pointed out, it may be midnight and you're working on a client project, scrambling to get finished because the CEO has yet again overpromised something that's not possible, or that should have never been promised to begin with because it over-pressures the team. Then, rinse and repeat with Brad's continuous reassurances of how everything is going to work out and money is coming and blah, blah, blah. The place is a joke and I have no idea how it's even still in business because from reading these reviews, it very much still has ALL the same problems. Same insane turnover rate, even for senior positions. There's a reason. During my time at Accelerate, pretty much everyone got let go at once because Brad could not pay the bills...because he had not received enough money from our clients (yet we were still doing the work). What kind of business model is that? Not to mention, the entire dev team is outsourced from India because they're cheaper than hiring in the US . Collaborating with them when they're in the opposite timezone and half of what you're trying to communicate getting misunderstood because of the language barrier is frustrating beyond belief, which wastes more time and resources.

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Accelerate Digital Agency Response
7y
Thanks for the review. There are definitely a lot of improvements that can be made at Accelerate. There have been many just in the past year. To name a few. + A new COO that runs the entire operations of the business. I don't actually hire anyone at the company, the past 6-7 employees have all been hired by managers not me, so I'm not sure how recent the experience of this review is. + A new VP of sales that runs the revenue generation side of the business. Through that process, we've continually worked on improved scoping, client expectations and contracts with measurable improvement + As of this date of writing this, less than 20% of our development is completed in India and Pakistan, with the Majority of development being completed in Poland, and other eastern European countries, some is being completed in Mexico. We have a US based Dev Ops Manager and a US Based Sr, Quality Assurance Manager, with plans to onboard a US based CTO. We haven't withheld payment from any or our contractors and currently have over 100 active software developers around the world. Of which have a 95%+ approval rating in working with us. + As of writing this today we are a debt free organization with strong financials, which I'm willing to share with any prospective employee or customer with an NDA in place. + We have rolled out standardized performance metrics across the organization and we're continually improving them as well. If you have any additional suggestions for how we can improve. I truly would like to hear any suggestions over coffee in our office. For current employees, if you have any questions or suggestions, please keep passing them along, we'll keep getting better. What I have told EVERY EMPLOYEE from day 1, is that Accelerate will continue to grow and reward top contributors with Opportunity and compensation. If you look across the organization today, there are several people in key roles, that I believe would reflect that sentiment. We have also made it abundantly clear, as a part of our hiring process to over qualify pace of work to our potential hires. This was implemented about 12 months or so ago. We specifically interview to understand a candidates ability to handle multiple clients, multiple internal teams and balance it well. We don't want, or encourage anyone to work late (more that 40 hours) to complete work. We are not a perfect organization. We have our problems. However. We have continued to grow at a fast pace, while creating better structure, processes and working to create an overall better place to work. Most important, I do take full responsibility for all the improvements and overall performance of the organization and I give our leadership the credit for all the improvements. Brad

Explore other reviews about Accelerate Digital Agency

5.0
14 Nov 2017
Anonymous intern
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I was an intern at Accelerate over the summer and I was shocked at how much I learned in just 3 months. At first I was unsure of what to expect working with a start-up company, but I would now recommend working with a small company like this to anyone. The first day I started Brad, the CEO, sat down with me and asked me for my ideas/thoughts/opinions. Considering I've exclusively worked in companies where the CEO's are too busy to acknowledge the interns, this was a very pleasant surprise. From that day forward, I gained confidence in my abilities and what I can bring to the table. I wasn't afraid to give my input and to work creatively throughout the summer because I knew the team here actually cared about my work as an intern. For anyone who is creative, driven, hungry for knowledge and development, and loves the hustle — I recommend working here. The company culture is inspiring, everyone is motivated and actually works together as a team. The team makes you feel like home and I left at the end of the summer feeling accomplished, and have grown as a young professional. Another huge pro: walking distance to fashion valley AKA lunch breaks were always a good time.

Cons

Can't think of anything.

2
5.0
22 May 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Almost a couple years in now to working with Brad/Jon at Accelerate Agency and it's been a great and growing ride. I think one of the things you find out quickly is their commitment to grow an business that not only makes money for the bottomline of the company and it's employees but the desire to grow a company that has a positive impact on the industry in our city and beyond. One of the things you've often hear from Brad is his commitment to see us as employees meet our personal career goals. And then helps to point us in the direction to see that become a reality. Working here has continued to sharpen my skills and help remind me of what it takes to build something successful.

Cons

Honestly hard to find con's... It's a strong, forward moving type of company that's great to be a part of... the only con would be if you don't like to work hard... you may not want to apply to work here :)

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