A successful company that's been unable to scale its commitment to culture and people
Pros
I began at Lucid when it was a small(ish) startup. While I was extremely underpaid and overworked, I loved it. It was a place where opportunity was everywhere. You created your career at Lucid, and they gave you the runway to be independent and grab whatever you wanted - if you wanted it. I attribute my career trajectory to Lucid and its unique environment it created in its earlier times, and am grateful for the opportunity it provided me. I loved my early times at Lucid, but as time continued to move forward, I found Lucid’s commitment to great leadership, autonomy, startup mentality, and diplomacy to be waining. Lucid is a well-run business. Leadership is fiscally responsible and runs the company well from that perspective. I believe Lucid will continue to grow, will be poised for a great exit at some point, and be one of the great tech companies to come out of Utah. While the cons I list below are straightforward, I still believe Lucid is a good place and can be a good place for someone in their career. I also don’t believe these challenges are particularly unique to Lucid, but call them out specifically because Lucid so heavily claims they are exceptions to the typical baggage that comes along with successful tech companies. In 2016, I would have given Lucid five stars. But I have found much of those original core components of trust and culture to have diminished over time.
Cons
-Most of my comments below can be attributed to a single phenomenon: as Lucid has continued to grow and scale, it’s been unable to scale the culture, community, and opportunity it claims is crucial to its core. - While there are Forbes articles highlighting the immense amount of trust and autonomy Lucid grants its employees, I believe that is no longer the case. Working from home is passive-aggressively discouraged and face time is a key component to being valued at Lucid. - A culture of passive-aggression reigns at Lucid due to Utah culture running deep. You will not be corrected, critiqued, nor offered direct feedback. You may be praised, and believe you are doing great. But you may find your annual performance reviews coming in low, promotions being postponed, and pay raises refused all whilst being told you’re doing a great job. It can be immensely confusing and frustrating. - Lucid is no longer the hungry, tenacious, agile culture and company it once was. When I began, you were encouraged to grab hold of anything that needed to be done, run with it, and move quickly. It was chaotic, but there was room for growth everywhere. That has changed. It has become political, more bureaucratic, slower, and overly concerned with things that make work less enjoyable and meaningful. - You will, most likely, be underpaid at Lucid. If you start at Lucid being underpaid, you will most likely be unable to change your situation unless you find another offer to leverage. This perpetuates because the claim of great culture is used as justification for low salary. I watched countless colleagues (and myself) be denied for deserved promotions and pay raises to get paid market fairness. However, if you find a competing offer, Lucid will be quick to suddenly counter - but only if you threaten to leave. While Lucid prides itself in hiring the smartest people, their definition of so is limited in scope, narrow, and sometimes ignorant. Their definition of intelligent and capable is limited to top business schools who often think and operate the same, which is why they continue to ask candidates for their GPAs, even after being out of school for over 15 years. - Lucid claims it’s crowning achievement is its culture, and that you won’t find that anywhere else. Many employees are underpaid, unhappy, and under-supported, but have come to believe that they won’t find a great culture or environment anywhere else. I found that to be false, and have found its culture to have (negatively) changed heavily over the years I was there. - Management continually does not listen nor care when people are unhappy. Management (especially middle management) is not concerned about growth opportunities for those who report to them, not concerned in even hearing why employees may be struggling at Lucid, and refused to acknowledge or validate those. Eventually, I felt I needed to leave Lucid to continue learning or growing.
