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Faithlife

Now known as Logos

Engaged Employer

It certainly is a place that employs people - Advertising Manager Faithlife Employee Review

1.0
Mar 9, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Flexible work schedule with permanent WFH option and lots of flexibility for parents dealing with childcare Unlimited PTO (though sometimes restricted) Generally, peers were decent to work with 401(k) vesting/Medical benefits greatly improved recently Former employees really stick together and come through for each other, lots of employees have left together for the same companies and regularly recruit each other to work at their new workplaces

Cons

Pay is well below both industry average and average for the region, maximum raise allowed annually is 3%, extremely rare for pay increases to be given outside of annual raise, even with changes in job title/function - no bonus structure except on some of the sales teams and for executives. (At one point a younger, less experienced male colleague was hired to the same level/position as a female employee for almost 25% more and she had to threaten a lawsuit for them to equalize their rates, as a result he was not given a pay increase at his annual review and quit shortly after). Very few advancement opportunities, and when there are they usually do not come with pay increases, making them virtually worthless. In one meeting HR representatives bullied both female and POC workers who told them that due to their lack of advancement structure looking for other jobs seemed to be the only way they could see to advance in their career. HR has been a recent addition to the company, after nearly 30 years of having no HR position. Issues brought to HR around harassment were not addressed in any kind of satisfactory or timely manner. Extremely hostile work environment, maintains a volunteer/hustle culture mindset of expecting a lot of output from employees for very little reward. Lack of organization leads to a lot of scrambling and "just get it done" from leadership rather than planning ahead and allowing appropriate length of time for projects. Multiple instances of senior/executive staff behaving completely unacceptably toward young and especially female staff. One VP openly admitted to bringing "cute, young female" staff from other departments on his team ski-trips to try to use them as bait to get male developers to stay on at the company. Multiple cases of a senior marketing leader locking younger female employees in an office alone with him to berate and demean them for asking for pay increases. Multiple executives and members of senior leadership made a pattern of yelling/screaming at and berating employees when they were upset. Executive leadership/HR did nothing about any of these accusations (one VP may have been required to complete some form of workplace behavior training). Complete lack of diversity and inclusion (on race, gender, and LGBTQ+), very few women or POC in leadership or management roles, queer employees had openly homophobic things said to and about them by both coworkers and members of executive leadership, many queer staff have quit due to harassment and multiple POC staff members left due to open racism and resistance from leadership to even attempt to be more diverse/inclusive. Extremely sexist middle-management, senior leadership, and executive structure. It was a regular pattern for multiple female members in the marketing department to receive emails from men in completely different departments lecturing them on how they didn't know how to do their job, these detractors were rarely talked to (when one of these female staff members left and was replaced by a male counterpart he did not report the same level of harassment from peers/management). It was a running joke among employees that men were frequently surprised when female colleagues were competent and capable of doing their jobs. Extreme lack of transparency from executive leadership, including one executive specifically forbidding employees to mention how poorly projects are going to other teams/departments/members of leadership to conceal lack of organization. Lots of force-outs in advance of the recent layoffs that exiting employees were required to say were voluntary. Recent turn-over from long-term employees (5+ years) in addition to the existing high turn-over rate from new hires very concerning and not addressed (most employees do not last longer than 1-3 years - even the new COO did not make it a full year). The only effort I ever saw to retain employees was after employees put in their notice, there was never an effort to address issues as they were brought up, only when it was untenable and the decision had already been made to leave. Extremely adversarial relationships between departments (Sales, Development, Product, Customer Service, and Marketing) encouraged/perpetuated by executive leadership by down-talking the other departments, despite the fact that all are needed to make the company function properly. Lots of favoritism shown to Sales and Development in particular over the other departments (ex. Development had regular team ski trips while the marketing department was allotted $10/person to reimburse a team lunch after we surpassed a milestone and record-year in revenue; on another occasion after a team-building event marketing team members were given 'free' t-shirts that were left over from development interns 4-5 years ago and said 'Faithlife Dev Intern, 2016').

Explore other reviews about Faithlife

5.0
May 16, 2023
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Powerful and tangible mission connected throughout the organization. Exciting growth opportunities across the business. Vision to develop as a modern technology company. New and experienced executive team leading change.

Cons

Modernizing all functions takes adjustment.

2
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Faithlife Response
3y
Thank you for sharing your thoughts about your experience! We're glad to hear you value our mission and are excited about growth opportunities across the businesses. We’re committed to developing as a high-tech company and are fortunate to have a dedicated executive team leading the way. Your feedback is valuable as we continue to drive positive change across the organization. We're here to support you and work to create an even better employee experience.
3.0
Feb 3, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

For a long time Faithlife was the Christian software company, and there are tons of incredibly skilled software engineers, QA, product people there, and literally everyone I interacted with was awesome. Faithlife's founder and initial CEO was a Microsoft Software Engineer and he created a culture that values technical excellence and growth greatly. Technical debt was rarely suffered for long and engineers were afforded great leeway (and expected) to improve and modernize applications and tooling. Note that I don't know if the above has changed. Team leads are always open to engineers taking the lead on new feature development and developing leadership experience. Moving between teams is a regular occurrence and the relationship between development teams are often extremely good and team coordination and cooperation is generally really good. Team leads are well trained and the ones I had experience with were great at leading theie teams both technically and from a more leadership oriented approach.

Cons

The elephant in the room: the 2022 layoffs were very rough and brought a lot of management and leadership issues to everyone's attention. Faithlife has always been a mission driven organization but it isn't clear that the mission is embraced by the ownership of the company as it is by the rank and file. There is tension between it's stated mission and it's profit driven nature, and how that factors into the decisions the company makes. The departure of the founder/CEO Bob Pritchett brought with it a lot of cultural changes and uncertainties (and layoffs) and made it feel like that tension was leaning a lot more in favor of profit goals over mission. The above is purely my observations derived from my own feelings. If you're not a Christian of some flavor you will likely be uncomfortable working hear given the company's mission; though ironically I had fewer conversations about faith here than anywhere else I have ever worked. There was definitely a pressure to try to make the company more friendly to non-believers but it kind of made it weird for those who were (maybe an over correction). On-call rotations were pretty demanding for some teams with engineers being on call one week a month or even more frequently, and being responsible for services and applications they didn't touch as part of their day to day responsibilities. Likewise given the nature of the software being on call often meant being woken up at odd hours on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday and being unable to attend your own church services. Being a remote employee was actually a better experience prior to Covid rather than after. A lot of social activities were remote friendly pre-covid (and handled well) while post covid many simply stopped happening altogether. Faithlife rewards being broadly capable as an engineer over being really experienced and deeply knowledgeable in a particular area. Not necessarily a con, but still a point to mention. It can be really hard to stand out and get promoted to a higher tier Engineer role. Faithlife's expectations for the software development roles are really, really high, and given that there are so many extremely skilled engineers it can be tough to move up. Pay and benefits aren't really competitive with the sheer skills and responsibilities expected for the role levels.

9
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