Faithlife, now rebranded as Logos, appears to be trying to escape the onslaught of numerous negative reviews associated with the former brand. Instead of addressing their numerous errors, they seem intent in doubling-down on them.
Despite its 30+ year history, it seems like there are departments that are still allowed to operate with the disarray reminiscent of a fledgling startup, lacking clear structure and direction. Their culture seems to favor an arrogant, hustle-at-all-costs ethos, with little regard for healthy work-life balance and respectful workplace dynamics.
Because of the company's cost-cutting frenzy, workloads are overwhelmingly heavy, particularly with Foreign Languages, where managers, especially those of emerging lines of business, are expected to fulfill the responsibilities of several people. Every year, they're expected to hit higher revenue targets with even less money to work with, and somehow, also supposed to come up with more plans, more OKRs, more granular reports, and a ton of busywork so that others can take the credit. It's a reenactment of the Exodus 5:13 scenario: more bricks, less straw. The expectation to increasingly deliver while lacking the necessary support has created an irrational and frustrating situation. This environment is reinforced by regular meetings which often amount to no more than Performance measuring contests which, needless to say, fail to foster genuine team engagement.
When egregiously damaging decisions are made, leaders often evade direct responsibility. Instead, they hide behind convoluted jargon and delegate to others the dirty work of enforcing such decisions, thus sidestepping direct accountability. When employees seek clarity through specific questions, they are either lulled into a false sense of security or kept waiting for solutions that prove to be perpetually elusive and indefinitely postponed.
Leadership at the company tends to dismiss input from subject matter experts and fails to adequately communicate vital information. This disregard extends to contractors who, despite playing crucial roles, are treated as third-rate workers in the company. They face delayed payments, restricted access to information, exclusion from company benefits and social events, lack of safety net or insurance, and a pervasive sense of impending termination. Faithlife's contractors have the worst of both worlds: employee responsibilities and contractor benefits (i.e., zero). No recourse to HR. Are these practices in compliance with federal and state regulations?
In our grossly-mismanaged department, company culture is notably absent. The typical informal and social online gatherings common in other organizations are conspicuously missing here. To illustrate, my birthdays have slipped by unnoticed for several consecutive years. On the most recent occasion, instead of a celebration of another year of life, there was a meeting convened to inform contractors of a significant policy shift: the company would no longer provide the tools essential for their work, leaving them to fend for themselves in procuring necessary software and hardware.
Product managers, later renamed "business line owners," are overburdened, being expected to handle a broad spectrum of responsibilities, from sales and marketing to customer service and product strategy, often without sufficient resources or support, while pressured to make high-impact decisions in a short amount of time. As stressful as this is, the recent abrupt terminations of numerous employees, coupled with an alarmingly high turnover rate of talented individuals, alongside below-industry-standard pay and drastically reduced budgets, and the company's mishandling of basic obligations make the work experience nothing short of brutally demoralizing.
The refusal of the leadership to acknowledge and rectify mistakes, coupled with a culture that seems to value self-promotion over humility, will lead to its inevitable demise unless senior leadership owns these grave mistakes and reverses course immediately. With the incoming CEO, they have an extraordinary opportunity to do so.
The reviews here tell the same story: Faithlife, now known as Logos, is not what it used to be. At the end of the day, it's painfully obvious that their only concern is the bottom line, and that, despite the fact that they're in the business of selling Christian products, genuine Christian ethics are conspicuously absent.
