Pros
I found that there are very few positives to working for Crisp. 1. The incentives were nice when they weren’t changed to be unattainable. 2. They have some decent people working there. Though the decent ones leave pretty quickly! 3. Some of the clients are so kind and encouraging. It broke my heart to not warn them against working with this company. 4. If swag is important to you, this is the place for it. You should have the trash bag of tshirts I gave goodwill. Had to keep some of the nicer stuff but I find that stickers or patches will cover up an unsightly company logo pretty easily!
Cons
It’s hard to know where to start. 1. The expectation for employees is that Crisp gets full access to your lives. You are to essentially be on call. If you aren’t available via Slack, you’re judged. I had colleagues feel like they had to answer during vacation because that is what they saw from their leaders. If you have a spouse or children, they will feel the impact. I promise. 2. It’s a revolving door due to incredibly toxic culture. When people are considered veteran employees after a year - you should run. When you are forced to lie to clients about how long you’ve been there - you should run. Clients, if they say “just over a year now” or “coming up on a year now” that is a trained response meant to instill professional trust and disguise the fact that they can’t hold a staff. 3. The pay is genuinely unjust given the amount you are working. It is base + incentive but only certain teams are able to meet the goals necessary to get incentives. Again, because of ever changing, unrealistic targets. 4. The CEO is incredibly toxic. He spews messages of being a bootstrap entrepreneur and embodies toxic masculinity, and somehow clients idolize him. In reality, he built a business to coach attorneys without any legal experience whatsoever. No one has legitimate legal experience in that building. Most of leadership and the FEW employees who have been here more than 3 years came from a very similarly structured company called Scheduling Institute, which has the same coaching model for dentistry. 5. Speaking of scheduling institute, a vast majority of their content is ripped off from them or EOS. It’s just rebranded/reworded and packaged as revolutionary. If you’re going to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for your services, the least you could do is come up with something original. 6. I think Micromanage is Michael Mogill’s middle name. He, the CEO of the organization, sits in his upstairs office and conference room with full view of the break room and parking lot. He notices when people leave right at 5. He even tells employees. But even more than that, the people he chose to lead his teams have to take the same approach. Every move is monitored. If you don’t come in right at 8:55 for morning huddle, it is noted. If you come in 1 minute late due to Atlanta traffic, you’re pulled aside and told to take it from your car so you aren’t seen walking in during the cult like morning meeting. Communication is constant. I texted my boss more than my spouse. Every move is questioned and monitored. 7. This place is crawling with HR violations but nothing is truly done. I won’t go into detail here to protect the stories of others. The Head of People is incredibly kind. Poor thing probably has 5-10 exit interviews a month (out of roughly 130 employees). But unfortunately, a lot gets swept under the rug. 8. This one hits me the hardest. We were forced to sell services that clients genuinely did not need or sometimes could not afford. I would talk to clients and hear their financial struggles, but then try to pitch an upsell that I knew would be a bandaid at best. And every time they said yes, I just felt an overwhelming guilt. Unfortunately, this company seeks to bleed you dry until you realize that you could get any of this information from a basic business book or class. 9. If you are client facing there are insane rules and regulations, down the shade of your jeans or if your shoes have a logo on them. You are told not to drink water in front of clients unless at a dinner. If you have your phone you will be punished, which is fine. Except for the time a client wanted to see a picture of my pet. They said “just go get your phone!” And I had to say “I’m so sorry. If I am caught with my phone even in my pocket I will be in a lot of trouble.” Embarrassing. You are told to literally run to clients with the mic and hold it for them, but you have to kneel next to them as to not be seen. It looks so cultish and I had multiple clients say they felt sorry for me. It felt very “blink three times if you need help.” The face client’s see on the event side is a complete mask compared to what’s just behind the curtain. 10. Last but not least, mental health and work life balance are looked down upon. In fact, if you say the phrase work life balanced in an interview, you won’t be hired. I became a totally different person when I left. Once I recovered, I felt like I got my life and my personality back. My stress and anxiety levels significantly decreased. Balance is now something I won’t compromise on. I don’t live to work, I work to live. And That is not the mentality you will find at Crisp.
