Great coworkers, poor upper management. - Product Owner ETS Employee Review

2.0
Jun 10, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-The people you work with day to day are smart, creative, passionate people that really care about having meaningful education impact. -The company has a lot of diversity in its population. -Decent compensation package. -Flexible schedule with remote work. Direct managers are understanding if you have appointments you need to take during the day.

Cons

-Upper management is very indecisive and it's clear that there are competing perspectives on where the company should be going, but all we see is infighting and little to no progress. -Upper management is disrespectful to the amazing talent they have on their teams and it has created a toxic environment where people feel like they can't do or say anything without asking for permission. -For having no strategy, upper management does a whole lot of micromanaging. -It looks like upper management are trying to cost cut (layoffs and cutting project budgets) and acquire to success, not willing to significantly invest internally in creative new ideas that could diversify the company away from the declined high stakes testing market.

Explore other reviews about ETS

5.0
Mar 5, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

ETS have a group of outstanding researchers

Cons

like all other industries, it has to face AI impacts

1.0
May 22, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Support of immediate management and coworkers makes coming to work every day a pleasure.

Cons

Where to start... First, the employee performance evaluation process and methodology has changed from 1) performance vs your job description to 2) OKRs which were completely unattainable and meaningless at every level to 3) rocks and outcomes which again have very little to do with the day to day jobs of most employees. It seems the burden for goals and objectives and performance management has shifted from management to employees as they try to define a methodology that holds only doers responsible for the company's success. All this since Amit Sevak took over. Management manipulated the questions in a recent employee survey to force responses that made it look like there was improvement year over year. Of course, when you add a new President between the employees and the CEO peoples opinion of senior management is improved. Of course when you shift the focus to immediate management from senior management, the responses will be improved. Try issuing the exact same survey as the prior year and see how much "real" improvement there was in the numbers.

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