Kiva reviews

The new CEO has sadly changed everything. Rather than recognizing that the problem was with a lack of strategic direction from management, the CEO blamed all problems on staff. He is bringing in tons of people from the outside with no input from the current team and taking away responsibilities from current talented staff, giving all new projects to outside contractors. He claims "new" ideas as his own instead of recognizing that lower level staff have been working on these ideas for years and just never had management give them the green light to make them happen. The new exec team is largely very corporate and doesn't show signs that they are authentically there for the mission. It is run like any other tech company now and focused on technology, technology, technology instead of the mission (if people wanted to work for the latest technology, they could make 2x the salary at basically any other company in the Bay Area, so this is ridiculous). There is no input from the staff and existing Kiva users on how things can improve. Instead, it's the "we need to revamp everything" approach in order to be more like Amazon, Facebook, etc. Half the staff has turned over in the last ~12 months. Terrible morale that is not acknowledged by the exec team despite constant attempts to get them to talk about it. All people that are still there that aren't recent hires are looking for new jobs.

Kiva was an incredible place to work for a long time. Unfortunately new management doesn't have the skills or desire to retain what was so great about it, namely the culture and mission. -Extreme top-down approach - Direction and ideas come from the CEO only, not even other management team members, let alone the wider organization. New ideas and projects are not collaborative, information is hoarded, and people do not look out for one another anymore. -Huge recent turnover - There was a mass exodus in 2018 under the new CEO, who has taken an extremely top-down, hierarchical and un-transparent approach. A few good people remain, but most are trying to leave. -Heart gone from leadership - Much of the mission-driven management left under new leadership and the new CEO replaced them with mercenaries. New management has no relevant background leading to poor decision making.