Altruist (CA) reviews

Awful leadership. Rude, poor communication, and confounding decision-making. I wasn't opposed to RTO when it was announced, and originally it seemed like they were going to be treating it with care. However, that hasn't been the case. The office in LA is horrible - it is incredibly noisy (no sound insulation, no walls, music playing, traffic outside, etc.), there is never any space to take meetings, and there isn't enough room for the whole company. (So much so that we trade off days we go into the office currently - which is laughable since the whole point was to "collaborate.") If the offices weren't ready, we should have waited until we could comfortably fit everyone before we started coming back. The extra few months not only would have given people more time to adjust, but would have allowed us to properly prepare the offices, and would have given us more support from colleagues staying during this busy time.

Return to office is going to be a disaster for Altruist. There are many people at this company who are going to be forced out, even if they really want to move to California. Only giving your employees six weeks to decide whether to move across the country, only eight months to make the move, and an insultingly small package to do it with means that some people who want to make this happen will not be able to. People on year long leases, with children who will need to start at a brand new school with three months left in the school year, anyone who is a caretaker for another family member, or anyone with a disability that prevents them from moving or participating in hybrid work are all at risk of being pushed out of the company. The timeframe Altruist has given to its employees for RTO is inflexible and far too short. Additionally, there was little transparency into the data the executives used to make this decision. When questioned about it, Jason’s response was effectively “trust me”. Executives said they expect only limited turnover as a result of this process, meaning they’re either out of touch or RTO is a capricious and erratic attempt to cut payroll. One of Altruist’s key values is kindness, but this move feels cruel. The way Altruist handled the 2022 review cycle is embarrassing. First, the end of year process that was supposed to take place in December of 2022 was postponed to April and then to June / July of 2023. This was all under the guise that they wanted to wait til after self-clearing launch to do these reviews. I know people who worked day and night for days on end to make the self-clearing launch happen, only to end up with raises that didn’t match their contributions paid out seven months late.