- Terrible management, lots of office politics: they promote by playing favorites instead of promoting whoever is most qualified for the job, so terrible ill-equipped managers get rewarded while some of the most hardworking people stay at the bottom. They give no training or tools to help managers improve, and the employees have no power because there are no 360 reviews.
- No transparency: They've definitely read the glassdoor reviews and are aware of all the problems that are listed review after review since they try to get current employees to write fake nice ones to cover it up. Instead of trying to fix the issues, they sweep the problems at company meetings under the rug acting like things are doing great instead of being honest. When they can't acknowledge that there are serious problems, how can you expect anything to get better?
- Horrible D&I: At other companies, D&I is a separate team with dedicated roles of those who specialize and are trained in this work. At Kendo, they pat themselves on the back for having a DEI team, but it's basically a group of mostly non-white volunteers who have to put in extra work, with no extra promotion or pay, in order to do all the work of improving Kendo's diversity and inclusion initiatives. If the burden is going to be put on volunteer employees, the least Kendo could do is to compensate them for their time. Additionally, I've witnessed managers who have said some extremely racially and culturally insensitive comments— managers need sensitivity training at minimum.
- No work-life balance: You're expected to be on call at any time, whether it's late at night or on the weekend, and they chalk it up to being a part of our job or that it's part of their "start-up mindset" hustle. There is no excuse for a huge company to use the "it's like a start-up" excuse anymore— these are several multi-million dollar global brands with hundreds of employees around the world. Stop using hustle culture as an excuse to overwork employees. Even if they lie and say you can log off, you all know that you never really can.
- Immature and unprofessional work environment: I've heard my managers speak badly about others on our own team. I've seen other managers encourage employees to report their managers to edge them out from their positions. I've also heard high level execs doing the same for others within the company, and also talking badly about clients we work with. The level of gossip and badmouthing is childish and immature, and should have no place in the workplace. Execs and managers have set a horrible example which then encourages this behavior across the company.
- No HR policies in place to make you feel safe: there are no 360 reviews, no way to submit anonymous feedback if someone makes an offensive comment or if someone does something inappropriate to you. If you try to bring up anything to HR, they'll deny or pretend to help you, but nothing ever gets done.
Bottom line: it's not worth it. Your mental health will suffer. You'll put in 16 hour days and still be undervalued. The magic of working on a "cool" brand wears off, and all you'll be left with is bad managers, unprofessional execs, an unhealthy work environment, and horrible mental health. Many of us have tried to get it to change for years. Ask anyone who has been there a couple years— there's a reason why there's review after review of former employees calling Kendo a sinking ship.
