Cobalt

I gave these crapsacks one star because Unilocal’s rating system doesn’t allow negative integers.
After the initial 4-​to-​6 weeks of aptitude tests, phone calls, reference checks, interviews, and invasive dissecting of your business, credit, and personal history, they strip you naked and throw you in a pit with the other shortlisters, where you must fight to the death using a limited quantity of cheap office supplies as your only arsenal. Then you piss in a cup, and if you’re clean, they hire you.
The swamp donkeys in management aren’t fit to run an ant farm. They play favorites, sabotage rivals, and look out for their own. Bullying runs rampant, and they fire anybody who complains too loudly.
And don’t count on any corporate compassion. I’ve seen them actively dissuade employees from applying for FMLA, violate the ADA, and share a good laugh about how well they covered it up. I don’t think those soulsuckers would grant me bereavement leave to attend my own funeral.
I should have known something was screwy four months in when an attorney approached me looking to shore up plaintiffs for a class action. They don’t call it Hobalt for nothing.
About half-​way through my tenure there, I was promoted from ProCare SEO to Power SEO, which is sort of like going from burger flipping to fry dunking. The work will numb your brain as much as it numbs your ass, but you’re bound to find plenty of challenges in the company social scene. I didn’t learn jack about SEO, but my reserve of yo mama jokes increased tenfold. The annual St. Patrick’s Day and Halloween parties are conducted with the order and civility of a Vegas drunk tank. I’ve seen tamer dance floors on the German disco circuit.
How were these twatwaffles ever deemed fit for hire? I swear some of these fools must have a photo of the CEO with a donkey or something.
Decision makers at the leadership level have started outsourcing open positions to India and hiring contractors locally because company policy allows for the at-​will corporate bitch-​slapping of non-​permanent employees. Between their low pay and absurdly crowded workspace, it’s only a matter of time before the poor bastards resort to cannibalism.
The mid-​level crotch jockeys have started pressuring people to relocate to the Detroit office. No one is leaving Seattle for Detroit, dumbasses. Detroit is to Seattle what a Pinto is to a Maserati; what Jell-​O is to crème brûlée. If Seattle had a greasy, chain-​smoking uncle who gets drunk and touches it at family gatherings, he would be Detroit.
As for work/​life balance, there’s an overarching assumption in the Services department that you’ll be working off the clock. I only had a manager say it to me explicitly on one occasion, but the implication is always there, and Vlad flipping Tepes couldn’t put a finer point on that shit.
Your coworkers will spy on you, and you’ll be encouraged to spy on them. You’ll be asked to shorten your vacation, or give up the work they promised to cover while you were out. Put up a fight, and you’ll get some corporate douche spew about company loyalty and being a team player. My mother called; she wants her pervasive Catholic guilt back.
The junkmunchers in HR will call you on your sick days to make sure you’re actually sick, and they’ll tail you if they suspect you’re taking time off to interview elsewhere. They’ll also trash talk you to prospective employers, then deny it when you confront them. (Joke’s on you, assclowns: that wasn’t Expedia’s HR rep, that was me doing my best Alec Baldwin.)
Listening to management explain a new policy or procedure is like reading a Thomas Pynchon book, only without the humor or vocabulary or intelligence. I gotta wonder if their asses envy all the shit that comes out of their mouths.
The worst part is they know how terrible their reputation is, and all they’ve done to improve it is bribe their current employees into posting positive online reviews for the company. Do you want to know how many married men have had sex in the wellness room? With each other? This company will devour your soul Ammit-​style and refuse to tip the waiter.
I worked my tight, round ass off for these motherlovers, and they treated me like a Tijuana donkey. I gave them two years of my life, and all I got in return was a twenty-​dollar Amazon gift card and a raging alcohol problem.
You people are a Christmas morning hangover. You hear me, Cobalt? You’re a 2am car alarm. You are chunks in my yogurt.
If I had 10 grand to blow on soothing my embittered spirit, I’d drag a lawyer up in there and I bet you’d fold faster than Niki Lauda on laundry day, and come out twice as crispy. (Yes, I went there.)
That said, I believe in giving credit where credit is due, so I’ll end this anger-​dump by commending Cobalt leadership for its dedication to charitable causes, particularly those involving children and animals.
And speaking of animals, I referenced donkeys three times in this review. Draw your own conclusions.

Job Seekers Beware: I had the single most unprofessional experience of my career while going through the month long hiring process with Cobalt. After weeks of interviews and technical proficiency testing for a mid-​level marketing management position which all went very well, I came in for one final battery of interviews at their corporate office in Seattle’s SODO district. The first several interviews went fine but the last was with the head of SEO named Dana Melick. He was new, having just moved over from Razorfish. I asked him how he had liked working for them and he bad-​mouthed them for lack of vision and planning.
After a brief conversation about banner ads, he asked me one question about my management experience. During my answer I told him that it had been a few years since the last time I had managed a team. He then abruptly asked me if I needed to plug the parking meter since I had been there for a while. I went down to do it but when I returned, I was met by a subordinate who told me that he had been told to cut me loose due to my lack of management experience. Take a moment and enjoy the irony of the guy who deemed my management skills to be inadequate dispatching a flunky to do his dirty work after sending me to dump $ 5 into a parking meter. I politely but firmly voiced my displeasure to the subordinate and left.
A year later Cobalt contacted me again for a different position. I went through several interviews and the technical testing which took several hours again. Up to this point they apparently did not realize that I had gone through the interview process previously but when they realized I already had a login for the testing In the system they put it together. They had already sent me an email telling me that I had done well in the testing and was a great match for the position. They followed up asking me if I was the same person who had gone through the process a year earlier. When I responded that I was, I didn’t hear from them for several days. I finally emailed them asking when the next interview would be and they responded with an email saying that they had decided to move forward with another candidate who was lower on the salary range scale. We had discussed this in depth in an earlier interview and they were fine with where I fell in that scale.
Cobalt has a very flawed corporate culture. Their banner ads are intrusive and they have no respect for people who spend time and money to navigate their hiring process. Don’t waste your time.