I’ve been at Faithlife for many years and have always been very loyal to the company, but that is changing. I can’t say that I recommend working here anymore. In 2021 we sold to a private equity firm and we were assured that it wouldn’t cause negative effects and that we’d continue to operate normally. But after that, things got much worse. Our beloved founder stepped down as CEO and was replaced by an MBA from Amazon who has good intentions, but is too money-driven. We got a new HR department which runs endless amounts of surveys and claims to be working on making Faithlife the best place to work but has only made the employee experience worse. I had a recent experience with them that made it clear that no matter what they say, I’m just a number to them, not a person. Our company values include openness and honesty, but there are rumors that those are changing, because the executive team is not open or honest anymore. We had a “reduction in force,” but almost more frustrating than the layoffs themselves was the terrible communication around them. Layoffs were determined from a financial perspective by upper leadership. Some managers were not informed that their direct reports were getting fired and had to hear it directly from the ones who were being fired. Also, when it came time to communicate to the rest of the company, the communication was quite poor. The recent “sunsetting” of products has been confusing, as it’s clear that it’s financially driven but upper management insists that we’re “getting back to our vision” and refocusing, even though those products were well within our vision. There is more talk of reducing spend and the financials don’t look very healthy, which makes me feel like it’s not a very stable place to work. There is an extreme lack of diversity, especially with women in engineering and people of color. When leadership is asked about it, they blame pipeline problems or lack of diversity in the Pacific Northwest, even though the company is essentially remote now. They’ve flat out said in a company meeting that diversity is not a priority for the company. We have “unlimited PTO,” but what that means is up to your manager. Some years for me it’s meant 2-3 weeks, some years it’s meant 4-5. This is still better than many companies, but there’s a frustrating lack of clarity and you only find out when you’ve taken too much time off and your boss tells you to slow down or denies your December time off. The pay has always been under market value, but the incredible culture, work/life balance and flexibility, and strong mission have been enough to keep people happy. Since many of those things are being taken away, I worry for Faithlife’s long-term ability to attract and retain talent.
