Unfortunately, these same values don't exist at the executive level. The CEO is immature, utterly egoistical, and carries himself as a Steve Jobs type. He is maniacal about the most useless things and seems to micromanage every facet of the business. This has led to a toxic work culture where people don't feel comfortable about speaking their mind even though transparency and connection are claimed values -- a common pattern.
There is constant turnover from product and engineering with zero autonomy. I would be highly skeptical about joining the company if you belong to one of these groups. It's so grim that they've resorted to consultants to fill the hiring gaps. The roadmap is driven by sales and specifically by a few top accounts. This type of 'strategy' leads to minimal creativity and more of a services culture. You spend most of your time on something 'urgent' from a top account leading to constant context switching. Intuition drives decision making over empirical evidence -- this is obvious across most of management. They claim to be a data company, but fail to understand or know how to use it.
It really is a shame. They have a great social mission, humble team, and beautiful offices. In the end, none of that really matters if the executives don't empower the rest of the team. It's the opposite of real leadership, but more like a dictatorship. Leading from behind doesn't exist. The people rewarded are those that are liked i.e. agreeable. Challenging the status quo is not welcome and executive perception is the real key to success. Specifically, perception to the CEO. The irony is that it's the opposite of the famous Jobs quote, "It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”.
Finally, they claim to practice 'flexible' PTO which is a new HR policy to bypass the standard unlimited PTO. Several colleagues have gotten flagged after HR sorts employees by time requested. This happens regularly. It's really bizarre behavior for the valley and just reconfirms the lack of trust and autonomy the founders have in the team.
Let's repeat this -- zero trust, zero autonomy.
