Avoid Info-Tech Research Group at all costs. This was the most poorly managed, nepotistic organization producing the least useful products and services that I have ever had the misfortune of working at. It is not so much a business as it is an unstable house of cards, built on an ever-changing foundation of new hires kept on for slightly less than 1 year.
Every established employee is there not because they are particularly good at their job, but because The Blessed Founder has taken a liking to them and they have learned to take his word as gospel. The Founder is deeply and personally involved in nearly every intricate detail of the business from his home in Malta, making changes to day-to-day work being done in every department. He sits above the house of cards, lowering a ladder down to those below him in the hierarchy who have guzzled enough of his Kool-Aid to be chosen to join him in Malta. I was regularly informed in hushed tones about petty drama between The Founder and individual executives, as it impacted the workings of the business constantly and changed approval processes.
This same hierarchy seeps throughout the rest of the business, the smart employees learning to only focus on gaining the personal approval of the people above them. They’ve bred an intentionally unsupportive culture, where those higher in the house of cards are deified with the credentials of being “selected by The Founder”.
On one occasion, when I asked why Marketing was deferring to Researchers for Marketing copy, I was told literally that “Joel is super smart and has a knack for finding other super smart people, you just need to trust that”. This is how the organization is run - decisions made based on the touch of The Founder, rather than the experience of the people hired to provide their skills and knowledge in a specific area.
The organization as a whole feels more like a rudimentary LLM, spitting out mediocre drafts to remove the busywork that stops The Founder from running the organization all by himself. Given how obsessed with AI they are, I assume it’ll only be time before more and more of that is outsourced. Once we had an all-staff meeting where one of The Founder’s chosen made a 30 minute AI-Generated Powerpoint and speech about finding success through AI, boasting the whole time that he only had to put some half-ideas into ChatGPT to get something this polished.
The half-baked ideas from one of The Founder’s buddies filtered through a LLM was a featured presentation that everyone was required to sit through. This is what this company believes to be valuable.
As another review has mentioned, they also explicitly use Performance Improvement Plans as a way to get rid of employees who don’t buy into the hype. I was threatened with a PIP for multiple months, but management was too inept and focused on those above them that nothing actualised until literal days before I was terminated without cause.
The Toronto office space is pretty cool though, I guess. I can’t wait to see a better business do something more interesting with it when ITRG either goes bankrupt or gets bought out by a competitor so The Founder and his chosen can relax in Malta while everyone else gets screwed over. The new events person was great as well! If you do take a job here, get as much free food as you can.
Seriously though, avoid this place like your sanity depends on it, because it probably does. I can only assume they’ll find a way to delete this review, or at the very least provide a one-sided response that amounts to “We’re good actually and take these things very seriously” despite all of the reviews that say the opposite. I also think it’s interesting that 99% of the positive reviews are maybe two sentences with a 5 star review, where all the negative reviews go into great detail about the issues with the company.
Honestly, I’ve got to applaud how well they’ve stacked the Glassdoor deck in their favour. Whoever manages this page for Info-Tech is doing more work than most people there.
