A Company in Chaos and Decline - Anonymous employee Rocket Employee Review

SHORT VERSION * Rocket is in decline across multiple metrics * Poor leadership cascading from the CEO to VPs to mid-management * Chaotic, confusing work environment * Below average pay for technology positions LONG VERSION Rocket Companies is in decline. The company is slipping in mortgage company rankings, customer service ratings, and revenue. Employee attrition is on the rise. This decline is driving a full blown identity crisis as Rocket struggles to correct its culture and strategy. Signs of the struggle are everywhere. For one thing, Rocket Companies has changed its name several times in less than a year. CEO Jay Farner gets paid tens of millions a year for his milquetoast leadership. "Work harder" and "be more positive" are his mottos that he repeats in every company address. You don't need an MBA to know a strategic vision is necessary to keep a company going, and Jay Farner just isn't it. In absence of a vision from the CEO, it fell upon his VP leadership to create a new strategy. Leadership bought the personal finance app TrueBill for over a billion dollars. This was a massive, hasty acquisition. Sometime later, certain VPs admitted to their teams that they acquired TrueBill quickly and without much of a plan. This was a shocking admission but confirmed what many employees suspected from the start. Embarking on such a large acquisition without a concrete plan is an indictment of Rocket's leadership. It’s reckless and shows a disregard for the health of the company and its many employees. After the deal with TrueBill closed, Rocket employees were tasked with integrating TrueBill into Rocket's software. As there was no plan from leadership, it fell to mid-managers and individual contributors to determine how to combine two very different software products. The result was chaos and confusion. Numerous teams across the company are doing duplicative or contradictory work. Most teams are churning as they create and recreate their work every week with no goal in sight. Some teams are not working much at all, having been given no direction by their equally confused mid-managers. Leadership is not engaged or helpful; they shift blame to their subordinates and provide no direction. People are continuously moved around to different teams as departments are consolidated and people leave the company. If all that was not enough, my director abruptly fired my manager and made no attempt to contact me even though he knew I was unhappy and seeking an internal transfer. In my exit review, my director had the gall to criticize me for not doing more to get his attention even though he had ample knowledge and time to “do the right thing." His comments confirmed that leadership at Rocket Companies, from top to bottom, is baffling and impotent. Take your talents elsewhere.