I truly gave my best during my time at Mission Lane, hoping to grow with the company and contribute meaningfully. Unfortunately, my experience was marked by several concerning issues that I believe prospective employees should be aware of.
One of my biggest concerns was related to data privacy. I was asked by the People Operations Manager to grant the Data Engineering team super admin access to our HRIS. This level of access would have exposed highly sensitive employee information, including Social Security numbers and dependent data. I expressed my discomfort with this request and declined, as it did not align with my personal ethics or best practices around data security. It was also what I was not familiar with as other access levels could have been provided to the Data Science team besides super admin. Ultimately, the super admin access was not granted to the data team, but I felt like it took too much convincing on my end.
There were also serious communication breakdowns across leadership. For instance, we were originally told our former Chief People Officer was let go due to budget constraints. Later, in a separate conversation, the Chief Lending Officer stated it was a fit issue. This lack of transparency left the team confused and questioning the credibility of internal messaging.
Additionally, the culture did not support open, two-way communication between leadership and the broader People Operations team. After an internal satisfaction survey revealed that our team was one of the least satisfied group for two years in a row, rather than addressing the feedback with curiosity or support, we were told that we needed to step up or step out. This response felt dismissive and undermined the confidentiality and intent of the survey.
While there are likely departments or roles at Mission Lane that may offer a different experience, my time in People Operations revealed deeper organizational issues—particularly in how leadership communicates, how feedback is handled, and how employee data is treated.
