Social Driver Reviews

When you say "put people above everything else," does that only mean the higher-ups at Social Driver? Not sure how you can build a world class team by 1. hiring people with zero experience, 2. paying them pennies, and 3. treating them like garbage. - VALUES Just because you make everyone recite words at a weekly company-wide meeting doesn't mean you actually have values. Practice what you preach, or give it a rest. -MANAGEMENT It's safe to say that almost none of the managers or directors at Social Driver are equipped for their position. Those hiring choices and promotions make it impossible to grow professionally at this company. Just a thought, but some management training could help here. -WORK Work-life balance is a true joke here. Flexible WFH and unlimited vacation are promised upfront, without any structured limitations. You'll find that those policies have unspoken rules to them. Don't offer something and then pretend there were clear cut limitations down the line. Also, get to know your internal team. Learn how they work, what they're capable of producing, and how fast they can produce QUALITY work before promising clients something impossible. -PROCESS I understand every company goes through trial and error, but when you come across processes that don't work and are detrimental to employees... maybe it's time to actually go through with some of the changes you often promise to implement. -THE. ASSOCIATE. PROGRAM. An hourly position that is pitched as a learning experience but has all the roles and responsibilities of a normal full-time job? Social Driver's associate program takes advantage of eager young people and gives them full-time responsibilities, all while dangling the prospect of being hired at a salaried position over their heads so they work harder. Oh, and when you hit a year, you’ll find out that those first few months don't count towards your overall time at the company and your officially recognized start date is the day you become salaried. Be upfront with your employees.

Everything else. Social Driver is one of those places where you arrive, get really excited about the culture and work they do, and soon realize that it's completely hollow and the work they produce is incredibly low quality. While it's hard to pinpoint exactly what the real issue is with this company, there are certainly MANY factors that play into its incompetence, including the fact that their turn over rate is through the roof. My first issue with them is their management. Directors, senior, and higher-level employees frequently lack much more experience than their subordinates, stunting the growth of teams and leaving a lack of structure. In order to learn and improve, you need people with real experience. While it's expensive, it's necessary. This shortsightedness definitely contributes to the low-quality work. Speaking of payment, it's painfully lacking. Despite being advertised as a "startup", Social Driver has been around for 7 years...long enough for them to figure out how to pay people a living wage. Contrary to what they've told their employees, they're paid far below industry standard. Aside from this, raises, compensation, and reimbursement are almost non-existent. Any work that was done while working over time (i.e. working natural disasters and power outages overnight) rarely receives anything more than a pat on the back, if that. Which brings me to my next point - the people. No one would argue that in today's world, company culture is incredibly important. You have to like who you work with, and for the most part, you will at Social Driver. You'll find a lot of talented, hard-working, friendly people who lack experience outside of Social Driver i.e. at a real, functioning agency. This realization has lead to the swift exit of nearly a dozen employees over the course of only a few months and while of course, it's the nature of the business, people grow where they're planted. If you're not receiving any water, sunshine, or a living wage - there's only so far you can go here. Culture. Despite my previous statement about the importance of culture (and it is!), it has to be built around something. In Social Driver's case, it's this phrase: "Future is bright progress is social and the drivers make history". Now if you asked any of the employees aside from the CEO what this means, I'm not sure anyone could tell you as 1) they've refused to hire new people and continue to push out mediocre work (future is bright), 2) while being on social media is progressive (not really), in order to be truly progressive, you have to care about the work you do, have opinions, and not scale back the use of social media (progress is social), and 3) "drivers make history" as in, they're making their exit. From people crying at their desks to utter disregard of work-life balance, I could go on and on about the reasons to overlook this company, both for the future hire and for someone looking to grow their companies presence. For the hopeful hire looking at Social Driver, hoping what I'm saying is false, I wish it was. The bare minimum you can hope for a smaller company is that they care for their employees rather than choosing to put their value in a handful of people who have been there for far too long, but this isn't the case. For the company looking to grow their business by turning to digital - look elsewhere. There are so many companies in this city and around the country that do what Social Driver does, but with actual expertise and consideration for messaging. Improvements need to be made in order to make this a sustainable company in a very competitive market, and it's been made clear to a lot of us that Social Driver is operating below the competition. If you want a future in the world of digital, this might be a decent place to break in, but you'll hit your ceiling pretty quickly.