-The communication coming from leadership is dreadful. It's so overly complicated without really saying anything and as a manager myself, I find that 9 times out of 10 it creates more confusion with my team who then ask me questions I do not have the answers to.
-There is no longer unlimited PTO. Fine, wasn't always a fan of that anyway. However, instead of just giving us a specific number of PTO days (preferred), they decided to just give us a range of how much time we should take off. So, they take away unlimited PTO, but don't actually formalize PTO days thus helping them escape from having to pay out vacation days when people leave. Sneaky, sneaky! I'm sure someone smarter than me can figure out how that may actually be illegal.
-Took away the Global Week of Rest. Taking that week off (July 4th week) moving forward counts against your PTO range (3-5 weeks per year), whereas before the whole company got it off. The benefit to this was everyone was off the same week, so there was nothing to catch up on when you returned. Now that's gone.
-It is virtually impossible to get anything of strategic importance done. There is no sophisticated level of accountability baked into the company, and instead it's just up to everyone to "UGJ" (use good judgment). Nice in theory, but in practice a total nightmare. And it's only gotten worse over the last couple of years, which is kind of shocking. Leadership says all work should align to company OGPs, but the OGPs are ambiguous and all managed by leadership... so they tell you not to "spin up new work" (even if you've done analysis to demonstrate its value) while telling you you're not doing enough to help the company grow at the same time. It's infuriating, especially for people who truly want to have an impact and are at the top of their game.
-Growth Gabby. It's a childish persona, it's not motivating at all, and it's become eerie as they just created an AI avatar of her. Uncanny valley, as the first time I watched a video of her, I actually felt kind of bad for her.
-AI is such an important tool for all of us in the workplace, but it is a TOOL. HubSpot treats AI like it's a strategy, and then just says "Do more AI" without actually enabling anyone meaningfully, or being intentional about how we can all collectively use AI to be better at our jobs.
-No growth opportunity. There is nowhere to transfer to if you don't like your current org or team, and there's absolutely zero advanced internal mobility infrastructure.
-The vast majority of people fall off a major comp cliff after their new hire equity grants finish vesting in 3 years, with no meaningful effort from HubSpot to use refresher grants strategically as a retention strategy.
-New diversity strategy is just about "belonging" -- and no separate DEI activities, because "diversity and inclusion is just woven into everything we do." Literally not how DEI works, it has to be intentional to be effective because you're working against centuries of systemic racism and sexism.
