TOXIC CULTURE - stay away! - Product Manager Phenom Employee Review

2.0
Sep 8, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great teammates. Challenging and innovative product work. 95% of the time, Product Managers (PMs) have freedom to manage your product as you see fit. Remote work with somewhat flexible hours (on those rare days with < 6 hrs of meetings). Note: Hybrid required if you live within 30 mile birds-eye radius of Ambler, PA.

Cons

**Toxic Company Culture** The company mission and vision are just marketing propaganda. "Help 1 billion people find the right job"? More like "Sell whatever we can ASAP to line leadership's pockets". PMs are expected to lie to clients and sell features that do not exist and will not exist for the next 3+ quarters. It's telling that turnover is sky-high at a company that proclaims to help companies retain employees longer. Attempts at diversity, inclusion, and belonging are purely performative and misguided PR stunts. Expect verbal abuse and unrealistic demands from the C-suite, especially in Sunday 8AM "innovation" presentations to leadership (usually put on the calendar by leadership with ~1 wk notice, which doesn't leave enough time to complete pre-existing work *and* come up with a well-researched presentation on an innovative direction to take your product in). Yes, *Sunday* morning presentations. Throw in Friday morning business review presentations to leadership to make everyone miserable, including folks in Israel whose weekends are Friday-Saturday. Leadership constantly changes requirements. What good are a roadmap and sprints with planned stories when leadership keeps contradicting what they said earlier? Ex: Leadership says to drop everything and focus on something new, only to then expect the new thing as well as other deliverables they had instructed the team to drop earlier. Next week, leadership demands to know why item #2 that was dropped earlier isn't ready yet. There has also been some gas-lighting with deadlines, where leadership insists the deadline was earlier than what they had previously agreed to in order to push the team to work longer than their already 60+ hr weeks on these manufactured emergencies. Management volunteers early to mid level PMs for projects that these PMs don't have bandwidth for, and there is often no one to delegate any of this work to. Forget about discussions on realistic prioritization - everything was due yesterday so you're already behind and nothing can be de-prioritized. **Nonexistent Onboarding** "Sink or swim" mentality - there was no onboarding aside from the generic 2-day company-wide new hire onboarding. Product leaders believe in having new hires prove themselves via "trial by fire" - or more optimistically, just not taking any bandwidth away from other already-overworked PMs (turnover is insanely high, and the smartest PMs leave within their first few months). As other reviews have mentioned, HR pushes new hires to write Glassdoor reviews (literally adding this as an Week 1 onboarding checklist item) - likely to drown out the overwhelmingly negative reviews of employees who have been around for more than a week. **Benefits** Pay is not competitive, so they have to take advantage of early-career PMs who have very limited options. No 401k match. Phenom's version of Employee Appreciation Week is employee-led cooking webinar offerings at 5PM and calendar reminders to meditate on your own time and go outside to walk off your work-induced burnout. Unlimited PTO? Many employees are expected to check Slack and email throughout the day (from coworkers in India, Israel, Europe, US, & Canada) on your days off to respond to urgent messages. Why? Because the Product team runs *very* lean, and often no one else can answer these "business-critical" questions. Leadership keeps trying to "motivate" everyone into working harder with IPO promises. But no one outside of executive leadership has been offered any equity...

Explore other reviews about Phenom

5.0
May 16, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Have lot of scope to get involved and know the product and have the free will to try and fail

Cons

none none none none none

11
3.0
Jun 3, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Phenom offers exceptional flexibility with unlimited PTO and minimal micromanagement. The benefits are top-tier, and the free food in the office is a great perk. Overall, it’s a very employee-friendly environment that values autonomy.

Cons

There is a significant lack of direction within the CV team, with constantly shifting priorities and inconsistent delivery cycles. Methods and tools change frequently, and data collection is manual and inconsistent, frustrating both clients and employees. Furthermore, there is a lack of knowledge sharing between teams, which exacerbates inefficiencies. Leadership also lacks a clear vision for the department’s future, and there is no intuitive framework to streamline processes or deliver value more efficiently, creating ongoing friction for the team.

14
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All