- CEO cares more about what the media thinks of him than what his employees think. He uses departments as a scapegoat during company calls to pin the blame for being "ROI negative"
- Low diversity and inclusion is well reflected in the company culture. Women are often treated as secretaries and not frequently promoted. The CEO has 0 female direct reports. In the top 3 layers of the company, there are ~2x more women as EAs than there are women in leadership (and nearly all leaders are white or asian).
- There is no structure. Operational teams are doing a great job to come up with structure but the execution is utter chaos. Reorgs and structural processes that have been introduced at the end of 2019 are still not in place. People have been asked to relocate to an area with a lower cost of living (and will likely receive a reduced salary) as a part of this reorg -- but they have not been given a timeline for when they are expected to relocate (or if the reorg and relocations are actually final).
- There's a serious lack of efficiency because you're constantly reinventing the wheel and it's hard to have company-wide data insights when everyone is doing their jobs differently. Instead of creating process and more efficient workflows, Flexport went through a crazy hiring spree and now has spontaneous layoffs since they over-hired.
- Everything is made up -- there's no transparency in where numbers are coming from. This is getting better, but I don't know if it will ever actually be better. I remember pulling numbers with a more senior team member for a board deck when I first started and later discovered that those numbers were outrageously inflated because of how poorly managed different databases and processes were.
You may be asking yourself: This doesn't make sense, I keep reading articles that say Flexport is an amazing unicorn with revolutionary technology! This company has a press team that can make you excited about an expired bottle of mayonnaise. But once you're in, you realize the engine of this car is held together with zip-ties and no one knows what some of the zip ties are holding together anymore.
I became tougher because of Flexport. I've never had my self confidence so shaken or had to deal with so much harassment in a work environment before.