Pros
Salary in USD but often delayed
Cons
I was hired to be responsible for user acquisition and retention in my region. During the interview my supervisor told me that they were hiring for 3-4 years and that this job was for those who don’t like bosses (it’s true, just because the management can’t be called “bosses”). These two things were complete hypocrisy. So, when I joined I had * No marketing strategy, no guidelines * No KPI (“do whatever you like”) * No budget (“suggest and we’ll discuss”) Alright, that was a challenge for me, I thought I could deal with these obstacles and have it all how I imagined it. I just needed to present the necessity and push. Damn, I’ve never been so wrong. Strange things started to happen from the very beginning. During one of the first onboarding calls my supervisor confessed about not having any marketing background. Wait, what? Who appointed you, for god’s sake? Back then I didn’t pay much attention to it - at the end, all companies have slackers. I started talking to my co-workers. It turned out that all of them were supposed to do marketing but only few had any clue what it was about. For example, almost no one cared about optimizing influencers’ budget. Literally, a local manager could spend $10k on a person with 10k views on YouTube. When I out of interest asked why they paid so much this manager responded: “I just like this guy. Plus, in my region there are few influencers and they all are expensive”. Things with social networks were even worse - one time one of the managers presented with joy that in the last two weeks 3 people followed their Facebook page. Success! At the same time, I felt more and more the toxic mood of co-workers. They were passively aggressive towards management for stupid decisions, positioning changes out of nowhere, spending tons of dollars on campaigns with negative ROI (and later presenting it as success). Another pain point was the CEO. I was shocked when everyone on joint calls kept saying “yes” to all stuff he was saying later calling him a “dictator” privately and how incompetent he and all his top management team was. Couple of times I also had a “pleasure” talking to him - and I can agree with everything above. All decisions in the company can’t be done without his permission. Literally, even posting a picture on social media can be blocked by him without any explanation. He can ignore your actions for weeks and then suddenly say something like “No, stop it, we don’t need that”. The corporate culture (probably reflecting India) is that you should always say “yes”. My teammates tried a couple of times to argue with him - never succeeded. This guy is a control freak without any other opinions allowed. The craziest thing here - he is the pusher of this “no boss” concept at the same time trying to control how you breathe. He may seem nice at first but be ready for what I wrote above. I kept working in my geo trying to be out of all this. Then suddenly a seemingly good announcement came out - CEO decided to hire a new top manager who was supposed to finally start doing marketing. This candidate had a good record and I felt optimistic. I was supposed to report to this position through my supervisor. Spoiler: marketing never happened. This manager turned out to be a classy “integrator” being afraid to make any decisions constantly sending all active workers to the CEO. All calls ended with a decision to have another call. At first I thought it could be a chance for everyone to have the top manager as a pusher and “protector” from CEO’s ill-logic and complete misunderstanding of what was really happening in geos. Fair to say, the rumor said that the manager did couple of attempts to argue with the CEO having the same result - he didn’t care about the title. And with this manager joining the company not even strange but awful things started to happen. Suddenly, my supervisor left the company. When I reached to the managers everyone told me “we don’t discuss this”. Really? The guy gets lost in one day and no one cares? Just imagine - he had all the credentials to social accounts, 2FAs, approval responsibility etc. I tried texting on LinkedIn but never got a response with my messages checked! People leave like this ONLY if they get kicked out in a toxic way. This was my signal to leave the company number 1. And later signals were: * if before we had some budget to do marketing now all was cut. All regions (no matter of market size and other factors) were given ONE monthly sum to spend having the same KPI. CEO said: “I want to have free ways of promotion from now on”. Just like this and out of nowhere * I got promoted but had to wait for 5 months to see it happening. When I finally received the contract the raise was just 10% * Money bonus was replaced with stock options. But the company is not even close to the IPO(thanks to the management) * All new hires were stopped by the CEO in one day. Before that we were promised by the management to have more manpower with marketing background * Following the leave of my supervisor three managers left the company in the same way. One of them responsible for another project & leading marketing was promoted three months before the leave. Another rumour said he was kicked out after he asked for a vacation. It seems funny in a normal company but at BlueStacks everything can happen My version is that the top manager just decided to leave incompetent people in the team not to have real rivals for the position in the future. Is CEO aware of that? Of course he is. Another version is racism - they just want to gradually land all functions in India kicking out foreigners in one day. I had a chat with one of the managers kicked like that. He told me the managers didn’t even care to turn on the video on the “farewell” call. His account got blocked BEFORE this (later restored to have a call and then again blocked) so they don’t even care (or just can’t) make anything properly. My mission is to tell everyone the truth about the company. And now I’m ready to say goodbye to all this hypocrisy and TOTAL incompetence. Don’t be seduced by smiles and “startup” atmosphere - it never existed there. P.S. Laughing at how many paid reviews are here. They are also apparently from India copying each other. Guys, if you paid your PR agency or whoever for this - I got some bad news for you.
