- rushed & ultimately failed on the due diligence & integration of the Jiff acquisition which led to extreme mismanagement of people and operational chaos. over two years in without combined engineering stack, teams, systems, and processes and still no cohesive vision from management for how to fix (spent an entire year trying to implement an OKR system only to rip it out and disband company OKRs)
- ineffective HR. Little quality control for incoming or existing employees (quick to promote but rarely ever to fire). poor hiring & promotion techniques have led to ineffective upper management that cannot be removed. no upward evaluation mechanism leads to a cycle of bad managers promoting and/or protecting bad employees. little to no hiring support or on-boarding leaves every manager to fend for themselves. Refusal to acknowledge explicit employee feedback and actively works to stifle dissent (-suppressed poor employee NPS results for nearly two quarters and did not release full results, only discussed team by team, -ignores explicit manager/exit interview feedback, -combative when presented with frustrations about mgmt, mission or culture, -does not take ownership of culture, instead pushes a group of employees to form a "culture committee" to take ownership, -asks new employees for good glassdoor reviews [see timing of positive reviews])
- toxic company environment. ineffective management overworks top employees as they lack the skill to scale their teams, silences dissent by telling employees to be more flexible problem solvers (a la fyre festival) or using the guise of "professional development", rewards firefighting over problem solving which creates a culture of working harder not smarter, rewards the loudest employees which pits managers against each other in meetings to ensure their bosses hear about how much work they're doing (people talk more about the work they do than actually do it)
- layoffs continue to decimate lower level and operational/systems employees while ineffective management remains untouched. employees not promoted or given low/no raises with feedback of "you're not ready" but then replaced by multiple people at higher salaries once they quit (heavy turnover [most with nothing else lined up due to level of burnout] and loss of institutional knowledge). culture of employees "taking one for the team" to maintain "cash flow breakeven" while certain executives verbalized utter disregard for budgets (approved & bragged about events that were hundreds of thousands of dollars over budget) & employees.
- company has been on the downswing since 2015 and is nearing the end of its lifecycle (likely to be taken private or sold at low share price). potential for further decline much higher than potential for rebound.
