I’ve never worked somewhere that made me feel smaller for being human. From day one, the message was clear: keep your head down, don’t talk about where you work, don’t exist online. We were encouraged to hide behind “stealth” labels on LinkedIn and to avoid any public mention of the company. It didn’t feel like healthy confidentiality—it felt like erasing ourselves.
When my child was born, I took parental leave. That should’ve been a bright spot. Instead, a teammate told me it “looked bad,” and I heard whispers about how I’d let the team down. I came back grateful for my kid and somehow ashamed for taking a benefit the company supposedly offered. That’s a terrible feeling to attach to becoming a parent.
Performance reviews were another gut punch. The ratings used friendly words like “good” and “great,” but “good” turned out to be the bottom of the scale. I delivered projects on time and with solid quality, yet the doublespeak made it easy to hold down bonuses and impossible to know where I truly stood. It felt less like feedback and more like a trap.
Transparency was nonexistent. People hired as remote were later told to come into an office, with little acknowledgment in all-hands. Instead of addressing the thing everyone worried about, we got a deep dive on refrigeration—informative, maybe, but irrelevant to almost all of us and tone-deaf to the moment.
Evaluation criteria leaned on vague “mindsets,” which meant your fate depended on how a manager decided to interpret them that quarter. It didn’t feel fair or consistent. And when layoffs hit, colleagues described short severance and heavy restrictions on what they could say afterward. Watching friends leave like that drained whatever trust I had left.
If you value being open about your work, taking parental leave without side-eye, and getting clear, objective feedback—this place will hurt.
