Not a start-up anymore but insists on running like one. - Anonymous employee Semrush Employee Review

2.0
8 Sept 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

* Company name has great social capital. * Strong product that sells itself. * Developers have great technical knowledge and understanding of SEO and the industry. * US team is dedicated to providing great customer service and is passionate about the product.

Cons

* Company completely and repeatedly ignores the core values it espouses. * High turnover. * Complicated tool and poor product training on the use of it. * Uses bogus "start-up" label to encourage employees to work for less money and fill multiple roles without additional compensation, yet offers none of the advantages of working for a start-up like stock options or profit-sharing. * Micromanagement is a huge issue. Even for teams repeatedly meeting or exceeding quotas, there seems to be a prime directive to tinker and change things solely for change's sake. * US Management serves only as mouthpiece for Russian office. No critical or independent thinking is ever exercised before falling into lockstep. * Constant reorganization based on the latest "faddish" management style with zero research to confirm if said style is actually a good fit for the team or the organization. * Unclear and mutable job descriptions, responsibilities, and roles which leads to the next point. * Culture of fear is encouraged in home office and this carries over into interactions between US and European teams. Employees do not trust one another and there are feudal style territorial arguments as people struggle to justify their positions because roles are so poorly defined.

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Semrush Response
8y
Hey! Thank you for letting us know your thoughts and suggestions. We value your input and want to see our company grow in the right direction so by allowing us to hear your thoughts and concerns, this will help us to do just that. It is great to hear that from your perspective you encountered a US team that is dedicated and knowledgable of the tool itself. That's something any company of any product would love to hear. So again, thank you! Our company has been growing at a staggering rate over the past 9 years and we are so lucky it has but it also has been the cause of some of your negative experience to which we see. As we continue to grow in size, we have lost people along the way that have been with us for some time. This is something we recognize and have been making great strides over the last year to help. Sometimes, sadly, it does not always pan out the way it was suppose to or want one wanted to. And for that, we have lost some employees but we have gain some as well. We have been on the up-and-up in forward movement and progression. Anywhere from policy enhancements to office remodel to additional employee perks to benefit improvement (in the process of), etc. Though we have only been around not even a decade (which most start up company's are 7 - 10 years) we can safely say we have been coming into our own and making our mark in the industry. During the years of extreme growth, we have left in the wake some of the issues you bring up: 1.) Micromanagement - this is something we definitely want to stay clear of because we are believers in freedom in order to get the job done. On the flip side, we take pride in our employees and want to make sure that there are guidelines and proper policies/protocol to doing things the right way at the time of doing them. This is something standard in any company and we want to make sure we encourage and foster productivity by keeping things open, creative and free (within reason of course :) ). So thank you for this comment. 2.) "Faddish" Management - the way we have grown has been through trial and error which we encourage all our employees to do with anything they do! This is the only way a person or in the case, an organization can grow. Going through the managerial changes throughout the years has been many - this we agree with - however, the past year we have been working on stability within our office and our leaders/managers by creating and maintaining all our roles here. this also ties into job descriptions and responsibilities. We have come together to all work on what we feel we do and have made stable job descriptions for all. Job roles and responsibilities is something that will always be needed to review and revise since our company goes through evolutions and so does our employees within it. 3.) Stability In The US Office - We are really sad to hear that this point is what you've experience during your duration of employment with SEMrush. We've been making ever effort to make sure that our employees are comfortable. When we hear of such comments, we make every effort to set right and reaffirm our employees job stability. Now, if we do not know or an employee does not let us know of this feeling, then we would never be able to address this remark. Grant it, as stated above, we try to make a conscience effort to address any concerns or problems an employees has but sometimes it is not agreed upon on both sides. Moving forward we have made great progress but there is a lot more that we can be doing and that we are looking into doing. Your feedback is a tremendous help and we will take it with us as we continue to better our workplace and our relations with our employees. Thank you again!

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