Akamai went from a great place to work to a nightmare in a short period of time. Akamai became extremely lazy in the hiring process over the last half decade. Rather than finding good cultural fits, they just started hiring the first candidate that met a desired quota.
Real Estate leadership team was an example of nepotism at it finest. It’s run by a crew of inexperienced career climbers with undefined, but well compensated roles, and a “do as I say, not as I do.” attitude. Hint—when you tell other departments that their space utilization is an issue, but most of your Directors and VP work from home or their real estate brokers office 3-4 days a week, it’s not a good look.
HR leadership is a lacking. They generally couldn’t be bothered to weed out harassment or bullying even when it was staring them right in the face. Victim blaming and excuse making became all too common. Suggestion: Stop ignoring the patterns of misbehavior and hope it will go away when mistreated employees get fed up and leave. Acknowledging, but failing to correct or remove the problem actors doesn’t solve anything. It just reinforces that the misbehavior is acceptable to a company that represents itself as an inclusive “Great Place to Work”.
