Vectorworks Reviews

4.4

87% would recommend to a friend

(93 total reviews)
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Jason Pletcher

100% approve of CEO

85% positive business outlook

Vectorworks has an employee rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars, based on 93 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Vectorworks employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

93 reviews
1.0
4 May 2015

Innovative and creative people look elsewhere

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Pretty flexible if you need to take a personal day and they offer free lunches on Wednesdays. They also do some sort of fun event once a quarter (ski trip, Octoberfest party, etc).

Cons

I initially resisted posting a review because I did not want to write something negative, but after the blatant flooding of reviews by the company and the obvious damage control they are engaging in, I felt compelled to comment. The reviews that paint a grim view of the work environment are accurate portrayals of reality within the sales & marketing department. It is not just the grumblings of a few malcontents who have a personal axe to grind. In the last two years the company has lost the majority of it's staff from the marketing & sales department, especially those that had been with the company for 5+ years. In all cases, the behavior of the management were the root cause and I can say for sure that nothing has changed. The executives do not trust people to do the job that they were trained or hired to do, as evidenced by the fact that micromanaging every single decision is just the normal. Anything from how a gift basket needs to be arranged to whether or not a semi-colon belongs on an internal email, is up for debate at the executive level. This is the main reason why people get so frustrated and eventually leave. Threats and bullying are another reason. Two popular quotes that you will undoubtedly hear in meetings are: "if you do not like it then you can leave" or "you guys can discuss and decide but in the end it doesn't matter because only my vote counts". This type of management style has spread to other managers and directors as well and unfortunately it has only gotten worse. To be fair, the company is making money and adding staff. The CEO is friendly and has an open door policy. There are friendly and talented staff members. However none of this means a thing, if you are working in an environment where you are not empowered to make decisions and the leaders of your department operate with an emperor mentality. HR has received many complaints in exit interviews about the issues I have mentioned but it seems that the company leadership is satisfied to keep things status quo as long as revenues remain positive and the bonuses keep coming. Other reviews talk about a negative atmosphere for young women and that is 100% true. Nothing has changed after people complained. If you are ok with being micromanaged, threatened, bullied, spoken to in a condescending manner, or depressed, then you should apply. Also, if you are a young woman then you should be prepared to feel uncomfortable.

1.0
26 Jan 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Company events Free coffee and tea

Cons

Don’t be fooled by free lunches, happy hours, and a seemingly relaxed company culture. You will soon find yourself being gaslighted by a leadership team that constantly causes you to question your professionalism, work ethic, and overall sanity. There is no formalized onboarding process, even though you are told in your interview that there is. Your first several months are wrought with confusion with no solid guidance; you basically need to figure things out yourself with little-to-no support. Promotions are based on seniority, not on actual expertise, leadership skills, or talent for the position. What this means: if you get in good graces with senior management/executive leadership you can be promoted fairly quickly, even if you aren’t necessarily qualified. The leadership training is by no means useful to address these gaps — they usually consist of a glorified happy hour for socializing vs. actually discussing how to enhance leadership skills. This results in poor management practices overall that trickle down to lower-level employees having to figure out processes for themselves and shoulder the heavy lifting to get work done. The company also takes advantage of lower-level employees by having them do way more than their job title entails, without proper compensation. The majority of management gets away with shoddy leadership skills and hides behind the productivity of their teams to demonstrate their value, even though they do very little to actually contribute to the success of the organization. There is a complete disregard for internal processes, which results in no real set deadlines, unnecessary urgency to produce random deliverables, and confusion between different teams/departments. This is further exacerbated by the company operating in siloes, leading to constantly duplicating efforts, a ton of misaligned priorities, and a general waste of everyone’s time. Additionally, the lack of transparency about hiring decisions, processes, etc. has caused several team members to be completely blindsided by major changes that impact their work— it appears that if you aren’t liked by executive leadership you’ll be left in the dark. Finally, inappropriate comments are consistently made with sexist/racist/misogynistic undertones (oftentimes by management), but there are no repercussions nor actions taken by HR/senior leadership to address it, even though the company claims to value diversity and inclusion.

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Vectorworks Response
6y
Thank you for your feedback. We appreciate all input from current and former employees. Overall, we are sorry that your time with Vectorworks didn’t reflect our mission, which includes fostering collaboration and inclusion at all employee levels. Your thoughts have been shared with our leadership and management teams. We recognize that the first weeks and months in a new job can be challenging while making the transition. Our onboarding is meant to be a collaborative time for the employee, their team, and its management to help address concerns or questions about company culture and work responsibilities. This is why we extend our onboarding through a 90-day period and a culminating open-door session directly with HR. It’s our hope that employees seek regular feedback and guidance from their team and supervisors during this time to help meet individual needs. Your comments are helpful in taking a look to see if our process needs improvement. Career path documents, in specific, are part of our hiring/review/promotion process and based on skills, years’ experience, and responsibilities mastered; documents are available for each department and are used individually with each team member during annual review periods. To help cultivate strong teams, managers through executives receive regular training and leadership guidance to help grow the success of their team members. Training often coordinates with company-wide workshops to foster shared opportunities for learning. Recognition of hard work and milestone contributions is important to us, as is our goal of creating a sense of belonging by hosting monthly happy hours and family-inclusive events throughout the year. If it wasn’t conveyed prior, please accept our thanks for your contributions during your time with Vectorworks. I hope you find success in your future career choices. If you have further thoughts, please reach out to recruiting@vectorworks.net.
2.0
18 Oct 2014

Frustrating and unrewarding depending on the department

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Excellent benefits, talented employees, tuition reimbursement, fair pay. It was obvious that HR and the CEO were trying to make the company an enjoyable place to work. Company is successful and has experienced continual growth year over year.

Cons

The company has basically two halves, the Engineering side and the Sales & Marketing side. If you are on the Sales & Marketing side, you have to deal with the CMO, who can be a nightmare. He is the epitome of a micromanager and does not trust his managers, does not empower his team to make decisions, does not use standard means of corporate communication and project management tools, and rarely gives positive feedback on projects. In addition, he seeks to motivate his team by fear and coercion and is generally disrespectful, especially towards women. It's hard to accurately describe just how miserable the people were when I was there and I hear it hasn't gotten any better. As a result, the mood was tense and talented people were leaving the company in frustration or were getting fired because the environment had such a detrimental effect on their performance.

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Glassdoor has 107 Vectorworks reviews submitted anonymously by Vectorworks employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Vectorworks is right for you.