Where to start? I joined the company and at first, it seemed like a solid place to get some experience. The job itself was fine – didn’t love it but also didn’t hate it – and the people seemed to be genuine and down-to-earth. I remember being impressed with the CEO during my first few weeks and I genuinely enjoyed working at the company for about the first six months.
As the shine slowly faded away, however, I found that the company was obsessed with this idea of “durable growth”. Attend any monthly kickoff meeting and the CEO will mention it at least six or seven times. The idea was to create a recognizable, worldwide brand, to craft a company that could compete with other similar companies in the vacation rental industry. As time went on, I found myself becoming less and less enthused with the way things were run. After about a year, I could feel myself already beginning to wear out.
Without being too specific, my team was required to hit a certain quota of tasks every day. In theory, this sounds like standard corporate stuff, and it didn't sound too difficult. In practice, they were essentially asking people to operate at 100% capacity, 100% of the time. This system worked for some employees but it didn't work for just as many of us, and when we went to management asking for a different system of judgment, there was a lot of equivocating and hand-waving and never any real solutions for the very real burnout that started to spread. If you completed 98% of your tasks for the month, that was still considered an unsuccessful month. (At one point, our senior manager posted in our team channel that we had broken a record one month, but since we still hadn't hit our projected targets, the month was considered a failure). In truth, they wanted you to operate closer to 110%, and at first, they incentivized this goal with a modest bonus structure. That bonus structure collapsed in on itself around the end of 2021 when the team was restructured. It was also around this time that the role was changed from “Specialist” to “Advisor”. This happened in the midst of a company-wide pay restructuring. This new pay structure dictated that the “Specialist” title was now only for highly specialized roles, which my team was not. So they changed us to “Advisors”. Advisors, by the new pay structure, made less money than Specialists. Regardless of the intent behind the decision, this felt as if the whole team got demoted. Leadership insisted that this was not the case but then did nothing to assuage our grief over the decision. It felt as if we were all being taken advantage of.
For now, I’ll save time and space by fast-forwarding to September 2023, but rest assured that the time between these two events was not without its problems. We were told over and over again that we were important to the company – that our goals as a team were literally the company’s goals, but these words were empty, as the company continually showed us that we did not matter to them in the way they said we did. Standard corporate stuff here too: "Employee of the Month" incentives including gift cards and company swag. Pizza parties instead of bonuses. Things like that. Things were never great, but they were tolerable, mostly because of the amazing people that I had the pleasure of working with. If I didn’t love my teammates so much, I would have left the company long before I finally did.
In May of 2023, the company laid off 14% of its staff. Then, realizing they had made a hasty, reactive decision before the summer rush (the CEO himself admitted to this) they rehired a few people back to my team. That was a bad look at the time, but again, it was nothing compared to what was to come. We got the company through the summer rush only to be hit with another round of layoffs mid-September. This time, 20% of the company would be gone. If you’re keeping track, that’s 34% of the company cut over the course of six months. Layoffs happen, I get it, and if that had been it, that would be one thing, but what they did next, specifically to my team and another team at the company, was singlehandedly one of the most distressing and disrespectful things a company has ever put me through.
The CEO made it clear in the all-company meeting announcing the layoffs (which was its own lovely little piece of theater and damage control) that some teams would not know the full extent of the effects on their department until later in the month. My team turned out to be one of those teams. That day, they didn’t have anything new to tell us, other than that a Senior Manager, who had been with the company for years and was well-loved by everyone, had been let go. Taking over her responsibilities was the other senior manager who had only been with the company for less than a year. Aside from that, we were told that they were determining what to do with our team and that they would have answers for us by the end of the month. In the meantime, they somehow expected us to keep up with our individual daily goals, but this felt impossible considering the weight of the thing now hanging over our heads.
The following weeks were the two worst weeks of my entire professional career thus far. Nobody had answers. Nobody knew what was going on. It was a complete and utter mess. We were told that if we were unhappy we should mention that to our managers and maybe they could find a way to “transition us out of the company more gracefully” but when questions were asked about how that would work and play out, they danced around the question, never giving us a direct answer until nearly two weeks later. Some of us were offered this option but were not given the time or information we needed to make a sound decision. Meanwhile, managers still expected people to meet their daily goals, despite the fact that we were unsure if we would even have jobs in two weeks.
TL;DR – I have never felt as disrespected and devalued as an employee as I did towards the end of my time with Evolve. Although there was some low-key gaslighting and hand-waving from some middle managers/supervisors in my department, I don’t blame them. I think everyone was doing what was necessary to survive in those weeks and to make it known that they were doing their jobs as best as they could. The true culprits of this entire mess are upper management (C-Suite and Department Heads). When your Chief Financial Officer and Chief People Officer both quit within a month of each other, something is wrong. My opinion is that the ship is sinking. I would not recommend this company to anyone, even if it seems like it might be a nice place to be for a while at first. Do not believe the façade. Underneath, they are just a corporation that will always put profit before people.
