Pros
The company offers decent medical and dental insurance for individuals - though I cannot comment on family/spouse insurance rates. The cafeteria is a genuine perk and the option to pay by card or through paycheck deductions is convenient. The office itself is spacious and comfortable. Major holidays such as Memorial Day, July 4th, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day are observed and paid once you are past the probation period. Compensation can be competitive and raises are generally strong when you perform well in your role.
Cons
The work environment can be extremely tense and uncomfortable, especially when the owner is on site. When the he is in office you can expect there to be an air of tension in the building. He is well known within the company for being verbally abusive and demeaning. The owner has publicly made fun of the sales/customer service manager for not liking the color of her recently dyed hair and demanding she dye it before attending a tradeshow. He has also publicly degraded the same manager for her weight in front of her team. He can oftentimes be heard screaming at people from a department on the other side of the building, from a conference room, or his office. He seems to get satisfaction from knowing the employees at his company fear him and are afraid to speak up against the abusive culture he creates. He runs and controls the company by fear rather than professionalism. It often feels like the goal is to intimidate rather than lead.
In additional to the tense environment the owner creates, another manager, while not outright abusive, uses vocabulary that is better suited for a frat house rather than a professional office and is unapproachable. He has casually dropped “that’s ret*rded” in a conversation regarding a carrier logistics issue.
Interpersonal conflicts among leadership are frequent and disruptive. Employees are often pulled into these disagreements and used to pass messages, take sides, or handle the fallout. This happens most noticeably between product development and the design managers. It creates an environment that feels immature, unprofessional, chaotic, and unorganized. In plain and simple terms, it feels as though you are caught between feuding high school cliques.
The design manager has a habit of reacting with visible irritation, eye rolling, or dismissiveness. While the manager of product development will make requests with little information and expect you read between the lines of her requests or try to piece together the required information from various departments like a puzzle. While the product support manager is more approachable, she will often defer or push the responsibility onto other teams and still expect the the request to be answered immediately. The message this sends is clear, "Do not ask for clarification and do not expect patience".
Workload expectations are unrealistic. Leadership regularly ignores established timelines and pushes last minute demands onto teams without considering capacity. This is especially severe during tradeshow preparation, where the schedule is already strict and intense. It is common for employees to absorb the responsibilities of multiple roles for long periods because turnover is constant and replacements rarely stay long.
Many employees leave work drained, anxious, or discouraged because the pressure never stops and the expectations continually escalate. The culture does not encourage healthy growth or collaboration. It creates exhaustion, confusion, and fear. Leadership practices are the driving force behind this environment, and they are the reason many people do not stay long.