In full disclosure, it has been a couple years since I worked for Greystone. And one of the pros of the company was that it was a constantly changing company - I worked for the company for 3+ years and it is true that the company that I was hired to work for was almost unrecognizable from the company that I left. It is entirely possible that the Greystone that operates today is radically different than the Greystone I worked at. But a quick look at the smiling faces on the website show that the upper management is almost entirely the same, while the entirety of middle management and the staff of the technology department is almost entirely different.
When I worked for Greystone, the company thrived primarily by hiring young and inexperienced talent and working them to the bone until they had breakdowns or quit. Upper management had an attitude of "weeding out the weak", but this strategy applied to even strong workers. If you were performing well, they would load you with more and more work as a "reward" for being reliable, and eventually, there is a limit for even the "strongest" employee - and once you start to flounder, because of the competitive and "self-directed" environment, there was not only no help or support network around you, but there was a culture of social pressure to hide your failures. On a day-to-day basis, the stress level in the office was through the roof - it wasn't unusual to run into a coworker trying to hide their tears of panic, or yelling at each other in frustration or slamming doors. It was a "badge of honor" at Greystone to have worked yourself until you became seriously ill - stories of co-workers working themselves so hard they ended up in the hospital weren't told as a cautionary tale, but told as an example of how to be the best: "If you're not literally dying, you can keep working!" And for young and inexperienced people, with no other professional experience in the field to compare it, this seemed normal. After working in other environments... I can say confidently, that it is NOT normal.
The schedule was sometimes flexible around which hours of the day you would work, which was very helpful for some people, but most people in the technology department experienced extreme pressure to work 60+ hours every week. So while it was great to have the freedom to take a long lunch here and there, that never came close to compensating for how often you'd be expected to work 12+ hour days. The "unlimited" PTO sounds wonderful, until you realize how overloaded employees are and how the culture of "self-direction" and "competition" means that there is no one to cover for you if you use that day off - so if you take PTO, your workload will quite literally NEVER recover, and your boss/co-workers might think you are one of "weak" who need to be weeded out. And since the PTO was "unlimited", you weren't compensated for the time you didn't take, like you would be at most other companies. Again, since we were young and inexperienced and desperate, we didn't know that most companies will pay out any PTO you don't take when you leave - at Greystone, even though you hadn't taken a sick day or a day off in an entire year, since the PTO was "unlimited", there was nothing to repay you for.
The "hip and fun" culture that Greystone promotes may be real now - but it's not the Greystone I experienced. There was intense pressure to always APPEAR happy, and there was a period where upper management was VERY focused on awards and public acclaim (like being named one of Denver's "Best Places To Work!" by newspapers), so there was constant anxiety about looking "fun" - but the prominently displayed foosball table was broken the entire time that I worked there. It was just for show.
And finally, the reason I decided to finally write this review, is because I saw that Greystone is promoting themselves as a pioneer workplace for women in technology. And as a woman in the male-dominated technology field, at the time, I thought the constant discrimination and sexual harassment I faced at Greystone were normal. It was an almost daily occurrence to be inappropriately touched by members of upper management. As a woman, my appearance and my dress were constantly sources of public jokes. I heard second hand that there was a running joke about guessing my bra size. There were constant "jokes" about exchanging my body for access at the company - just for example, a senior manager once "joked" to me that he would "only allow me to access to [company resources that were critical to my job] if [I] wore tight pants more often." I was required to sit in business meetings where male co-workers rated the appearances of female clients, and when I complained it was disrespectful to those clients, I was told by a person in management that if I couldn't "take a joke" that I would have a "hard time fitting in with the guys". And being a "culture fit" was so publicly important at Greystone, that "fitting in" became absolutely necessary for my career - I didn't pursue the complaint, and I am still ashamed for it.
Discrimination was a clear problem - women were consistently expected to know twice as much as the men to be "smart", their ideas/contributions about technology were downplayed or considered invalid (while their ideas about more traditionally "feminine" roles were encouraged), and there was only one woman in upper management. There were very strict rules about disclosing your salary - it was literally the first thing I was told me on my first day, that if I told anyone found out my pay rate that I would be in trouble. It wasn't until years later that I learned why there was a rule like that - I finally figured out that I was making LESS THAN HALF the salary of the males at the same tier of the company that I was.
When I told my manager that I was considering leaving the company, I was told, "You've never worked anywhere else, really. You just don't know that every company is like this. And you won't get anything better than this!" But I have never regretted leaving, and I know now that manager was wrong - there are environments much safer, more positive, and productive than that. And maybe the Greystone of today is one of those positive environments now, like the President is promoting on his speaking tour; maybe it's a pioneer in creating a workplace that is safe for all genders, and the upper management that once told me to "learn to take a joke" has learned about the realities of sexual harassment in the modern era. They could be better now, and maybe you might want to work there.
But if you're interviewing at Greystone, especially if you are young and/or inexperienced and/or a woman, I caution you to grill those interviewers right back. Ask them if they've instituted and if they enforce an extensive sexual harassment policy; ask if they encourage employees to be open with each other about their salaries to prevent pay discrimination; ask if they have any non-male managers of technical jobs (not just HR or Marketing); ask if they have updated the unlimited PTO to encourage workers to take care of their health; ask if the "fun" and "cool" culture includes an emphasis on work/life balance; ask if their "self-directed" environment has processes and procedures in place to support you if you are overloaded; ask them if their pursuit of a "culture fit" means promoting diversity instead of only hiring people that look, act, and think like each other.
