SDC is somehow the world’s worst start-up AND the world’s worst big corporate company. Start-ups are often disorganized, fast-paced, exhausting - but with the huge upside of equity, quick promotions, exposure, flexibility, etc. Corporations are slow moving and can be boring - but are stable, with great benefits and training on iconic brands. SDC brings the worst of both. All of us are working start up hours (and in office days, that was butts in seats AT the office, thank you very much, zero work from home), yet a tiny percentage actually enjoy start-up equity (I’ll never forget the day we watched SDC go public from a crowded conference room at 7 am...and then went back to our desks to work a 10 hour day at HQ). And though SDC is growing into a large company, the policies and procedures have not caught up. A nonsensical development process, sub-par benefits, and zero stability with layoffs at any moment. Awesome.
I suggest talking to anyone who is either currently at SDC or left anytime in 2020. Here are my personal thoughts:
Leadership doesn't care about its people; it cares about the insane volume of work they ask for all day every day. The culture is fundamentally broken (if it was ever “fixed” to begin with). Here are some examples, ranging from the small to the significant:
Zero notice for furloughs or layoffs during COVID (and allegedly no severance; other companies are doing up to a year of healthcare benefits, several months of severance pay, and/or career counseling; SDC did 0 of these things and laid people off with no notice, as I understand it). And just to be clear, there were several other rounds of layoffs in 2020 pre covid, with the same principles - allegedly no severance, no career counseling, and even impacted people who had relocated their families to Nashville months or weeks before, and then were laid off within a few months.
People got chastised for slow internet or poor connection on public conference calls by the CEO, and then HR sent a list of routers we could spend our OWN money on. Laughable.
Apparently somewhere in the company there is a diversity and inclusion initiative? Nothing has come of it and the company has been absolutely and completely silent on diversity. Just like the smiles that SDC claims to fix, the management team is largely white and straight.
Unlimited PTO means you get like four company holidays, and then when you do take vacation (which will still be less than the place you left) people bother you all day.
Back when we were in the office (which is not comfortable, cool or anything you’d expect out of a downtown start up), the leadership team felt completely fine about having people pay for their own parking downtown or park all the way at Nissan stadium and then have to shuttle over, which when you are already working 50-60 hours a week is a lot to deal with. Whilst management (and random remote workers) enjoyed a weekly private jet flight into Nashville and a luxury stay at the 505 building on the company’s dime. This went on well after we went public by the way. It is very much the haves and have-nots.
There is a complete lack of strategy. It’s astounding. If you have ever worked at basically any other place, your head will spin with the shifts in strategy (well, not strategy, but pure non-strategic execution) that happen DAILY.
You’ll never get a straight answer on our targets, the numbers, etc. I surmise it is because no one actually knows what the targets are...or where they come from...or why.
We invest huge amounts in brand-new teams or new initiatives, only to completely abandon them at the first sign of trouble. This leads to failure and burnout, because of a complete lack of patience on management’s part. They'll see a week of data and make a snap decision - whether doubling down investment or pulling it all the way back. This impacts and the projects AND the humans who worked on said projects.
Decisions are made in large-forum meetings with the leadership team. Thus a few things happen: people talk over each other (in my opinion it’s males over females 75% of the time). People bend to the criticism of the CEO to save face rather than stand up to him, because often if you push back you get publicly chastised/laughed at/dismissed. The facts and recommendations aren’t properly heard, because no one is listening to the people actually working on the projects. Therefore, the decision-making quality is poor.
