Pros
I'm collecting a paycheck and hopefully a vested stock payout when we sell or I get laid off, which is probably the more likely of the two. The people that have stuck around despite the loss of culture, loss of benefits, and loss of vision are all there for you, despite the top-heavy hierarchy constantly trying to squeeze every last drop of life from them.
Cons
TLDR - Stay away if you're looking for a job. This place has become a toxic, corporate bureaucracy that rewards only the top management. You won't see the culture that used to be here that made this place amazing. You won't see job security. You won't see supportive leadership. All you'll see is cuts, layoffs, and cronyism. The longer explanation - Don't believe the positive reviews that seem to all happen directly after a string of negative reviews. If you follow the reviews in chronological order, you'll see the pattern of HR and management creating positive reviews to try to keep the company rating from tanking. While a lot of the negative reviews come as a result of a layoff and may seem spiteful on the surface, I can tell you they are 100% accurate. It really is this bad. This is not the amazing company it used to be even just a year ago. It's literally falling apart from the foundation up. The worst change that happened after the VC(Venture Capital) takeover and the 5 way merger was the change in management. Our previous CEO, and the founder of the company, was someone you could really stand behind. He was a visionary in this sector, and in life in general, and he really made you want to be more than what you thought you could be. His leadership and guidance made Illuminate the company it was. It felt like home, and the people felt like family. I've never missed a leader more than I miss the founder. Things were really, really amazing here until the VC pushed him out and supplanted in a new corporate CEO. That CEO was a shock to most people because he was pretty corporate leaning. However, he still valued culture and what made Illuminate great(it's people, aka, the secret sauce). Even though it was a change in values and culture, it was still culture. It was a change most were willing to accept. Then came the merger. The VC combined 5 companies into a single Illuminate. The second CEO was out in an overnight change, and a new CEO was in... and that's when things really went downhill. The current CEO is a lifeless puppet for the VC. She has no vision, no compassion, and no idea how to foster visionary growth. Under her "leadership", the company has seen 2 major rounds of layoffs in a single year, equating to about a 20% reduction in workforce across all departments. The first round was because of "redundancies" caused by the merger and overlapping roles. A lot of the people had no direct replacements or counterparts in the merged companies, so some layoffs were just flat out confusing to try to understand. In some cases, the layoffs resulted in entire departments being gutted and merged into others, leaving no one behind to address their prior duties. Shortly after the first cuts, upper management started getting hired. Emails read "Happy to announce the new VP/Director/Sr Manager of X" directly followed by "we worked together at X". It was in your face, blatant cronyism without any regard for the message it sent after a dramatic layoff. So people started leaving on their own accord, and vacancies in the lower ranks started piling up. So much so that some departments or teams were operating at double capacity due to the unwillingness of leadership to hire actual workers. They'd hire managers to fill unnecessary top level go-between positions, but not people doing the actual work. They needed to cut costs, but they kept hiring more and more $100k+ a year positions. It made no sense. Fast forward a year, and here we are again... the second round of layoffs. This time, there was no rhyme or reason. People producing at the top of their teams, making significantly less than others who weren't producing, were cut without notice. They just came in to work in the morning, were greeted by login errors, and told they weren't needed anymore. 50+ people... cut at a whim because "we weren't fulfilling our financial obligations to the VC and it's investors." All the while, we have more contracts and RFPs coming in than ever before, we're operating on skeleton crews on some teams, and people are doing 12+ hour days(myself included) to try to keep things afloat. The result is the same pattern of senior leadership hires and another company acquisition. We just keep piling more and more problems on top of an already broken and top-heavy structure that rewards only those at the top. Additionally, these top down price cuts hit benefits too. Health benefits were dramatically reduced to give all 5 companies a "comprehensive and market competitive program that balances the imperatives of employee satisfaction & retention and the recruitment of great talent with expense stewardship." What this essentially equated to is about a $5k-$7k yearly reduction in take home salary to most employees due to increased health care premiums. Not only were we now paying more for insurance, but the insurance was utter garbage. Want to see a doctor because you're sick? That's a $230 copay. Want to fill a prescription that used to cost a $20 copay? That's $100+ copay now. Coworkers with families are telling me that they have had to let their children go without treatment when sick because it would be the difference between the ability or inability to buy food or pay bills that month. I'm thankful that I don't have a family to support, or I wouldn't be able to go through the struggles that my coworkers are going through.
