Great Culture - Project Manager Ednetics Employee Review

Great People with lots of experience

Slow to adopt new processes

Ednetics (which has since been purchased by MGT) company has many very smart, highly experienced technical / engineering staff who are constantly honing their skills. They have a great reputation for high quality services. The company is solid, profitable, growing, and offers perks like fun company get-togethers and wellness education and activities.

With a hybrid work force across multiple locations, Ednetics does not do a good job at trying to engage and integrate their entire team with each other. I’ve worked at other remote companies that did a far better job helping connect team members and making them feel connected and not siloed. For example, all-hands meetings that introduce new hires and lets others get to know them live, inviting longer-term employees occasionally share about themselves live, including cross-functional updates from ALL departments, adding time for some virtual team-building in breakout groups with members mixed from different departments (could be incorporated into all-hands or set up as separate events), etc. Helping team members throughout the organization get to know each other a little on a personal level strengthens the company culture and the feeling of being truly one integrated team, effectively collaborating together, who know each other and support each other. There didn’t seem to be any focus or attention on how the company could work on this – I didn’t see any changes while I was there. More concerning, curiosity and continuous improvement were not encouraged, and sometimes actively discouraged within corporate functions. Questioning the status quo, or bringing up ideas for ways processes and workflows could be enhanced, was viewed with suspicion (as if it was a detraction), rather than valued – which seems especially backward for a tech company. Many other tech companies do the opposite and recognize that there is a huge ROI from empowering team members to challenge the status quo, and who are eager to find new and better ways to work. Another serious issue was management generally being unwilling to address issues directly, for example, practicing “radical candor” – caring personally, while challenging directly, quickly, and naturally. When concerns arose, they weren’t brought up promptly with good faith. Without dialog, managers can easily misinterpret situations or jump to false conclusions, potentially losing valuable contributors who could have significantly impacted the bottom line. (I think all of management could benefit from training in this area – radical candor and crucial conversations provide excellent examples.) My last point isn’t a criticism because a lot of companies miss this opportunity. But I would still make a suggestion for Ednetics: consider investing deliberately in continuous education for their people managers, as a team. Some managers find themselves newly promoted to such roles. Or they may be old school in the role. Or, most commonly, people managers have only learned indirectly from their own experiences and observations. Ednetics engineers very much value getting advanced formal certification to enhance their skills, they don’t just rely on experience and observation. I don’t think that Ednetics recognizes that this same thing applies to their people managers: providing them with periodic formal training by experts in leadership and soft skills, could provide a huge return in the enhanced quality and effectiveness of these leaders. It is also is a great for further team-building as a result of participating jointly with their fellow people managers.