Good coworkers, absent, unresponsive and cliquey leaders, says one thing, does another.
Pros
Daxko says they "hire the best" and at times I did feel like I was working with some of the best people I'd ever worked with in my career. Depending on your team, the people are friendly and will go out of their way to help--but I can't speak beyond the people I worked with in the software development side of the business. The company has an above average work-life balance, depending on your role. Even before the pandemic I and many others were already allowed to work from home whenever we felt like it, which helped immensely as a parent.
Cons
Leadership often felt like they were putting on a performance for the rank and file employees; critical questions asked at company all hands meetings were often dismissed or completely distorted and mischaracterized-almost deliberately by the executives. The company created a diversity committee after the CEO made some incredibly rude comments to an Asian-American employee after the death of George Floyd, this was barely two years after the same CEO had numerous complaints made about his treatment of women in the workplace. In a year and a half I don't think the committee has made any meaningful changes in the workplace for women or minorities other than making promotions that look incredibly tokenized. The company talks about transparency, but again asking critical questions about the health of the company results in vague answers or total non-answers. I submitted an anonymous question to the All Hands inbox during the pandemic only to hear the executive team completely distort the question and rephrase it completely to give a more favorable answer. The company refused to answer numerous questions about layoffs, furloughs and pay cuts honestly, but suddenly announced in April there would be yet another round of pay cuts and layoffs. They talk about "thriving" and taking care f their workforce, but leave that same workforce completely in the dark until it's time to reduce headcounts. In 2020 when the entire company was forced to take a 25% pay cut, someone asked if the executives would also be taking a pay cut and the answer was "The board will not allow us to". Daxko's leaders routinely asks its employees to make sacrifices while making none themselves. There are a lot of reviews here saying how 'cliquey' and 'exclusive' the leadership team is and those people are correct; I often felt like an outsider to my own boss. I had trouble getting the support and guidance I needed from them despite asking for it multiple times and received a write-up for failing to meet the standards which were constantly changing. Leaders at Daxko are constantly moving the goalposts and then disciplining or firing people who don't get a through ball in the goal fast enough. I felt I could no longer trust any of what my leaders were telling me, as I and several of my coworkers would be told one thing by our managers and executive leaders, only for the company to take a completely different direction entirely, leaving people burnt out, frustrated and without any direction or support from their managers, and then-once again-firing anyone who can't keep up. Any time you hear of a company that "hires slow, fires fast" as Daxko likes to say, run. People should be given guidance and support when they underperform-unless the person is a chronic strain on the team. You will be without of a job for the slightest failure to meet Daxko's ever changing standards without a chance to appeal to reason, or given a chance to improve and work on your professional development when the company makes another acquisition and puts you on a different team without warning. I was told upon hire the company has allowances for professional development, but after asking numerous times how I could take advantage of it and become a better program, I was eventually told by my manager they didn't have the funds for it. I felt lied to and mislead as professional development opportunities was the reason I accepted their job offer. The company has a program called "SAR" which stands for "Situation, Assessment, Recommendation". This is intended to give employees a "voice" to propose solutions or ideas to the leadership staff, but it is well known that only certain individuals have their SAR ideas accepted. It may as well be a black box. I and a number of my coworkers have submitted SARs and they were never heard from again. There was no transparency in the process, once you submitted it-it was gone. I resigned from Daxko because they sold a good picture during my interviews, but inside is a company that seems honestly confused about what it wants to be, fails to communicate honestly with its workforce and a CEO that is routinely making comments that are offensive and harmful to people from marginalized groups. I felt mislead and like I wasted time working here when I could have gone elsewhere and gotten a better opportunity.
