Pros
In many ways, my job at Prenda was the best job I'll ever have - though that was due to the great team of which I was a part. Some other pros: - Good health insurance - Unlimited PTO, and a lot of flexibility in scheduling. - Overall, a very nice workforce, where most people truly do seem to care about their coworkers. - Most employees do believe strongly in the general mission of the company. - Employees receive an annual subscription to Audible, and there are quite a few pathways within the company structure for employees to be supported in continuing learning (including a book club, and a coding club). - Despite the many, many cons, I would consider working there again in the future, if certain changes are made.
Cons
There are quite a few cons: - For two years in a row, more than 20% of the work force were laid off in the fall. The most recent layoffs came very shortly after the CEO told the entire company that there wouldn't be layoffs (and if there were, he'd tell people well in advance), and about six weeks after saying that if there were layoffs, people in leadership roles would be impacted as much as everyone else (of course, only one person in a leadership role was laid off, and it wasn't someone who headed one of the many underperforming teams). One person in a leadership role kept her job (and played a key role in devising a new business plan for the company), despite literally every person on her team being laid off, following the team's overall poor performance. - There's very much a culture where certain people in leadership positions have louder voices than others, and are given more weight than deserved. - Quite a few people in leadership positions have very questionable judgment, often driven by the short-term goal of growing as fast as possible, without regard to the quality of the experience necessary for sustainable growth. Despite this, the company has failed to show any growth for several years. - There are several people in leadership positions who are incredibly underqualified for their positions, and would not be in their roles in a company that had a stronger commitment to quality. Some of these individuals ended up in their roles because they were hired very early in the company's history, largely due to their belief in the company's mission and core values, but are now leading teams comprised of individuals who are significantly more qualified than themselves, yet often remain unwilling to listen to those more qualified team members. - It seems as if quite a few employees do very little work, and there's no accountability for that. Several have admitted to me how checked out they have/had been in their work, with one saying they work(ed) only 20 hours per week, and another saying that for over nine months they mostly spent their days surfing the internet/listening to podcasts/doing anything but work, without consequence. I suppose that may be a pro for some people, but it's definitely a con if you rely on your coworkers to get their stuff completed, or rely on the company actually surviving and growing. - A piss-poor commitment to much-needed DEI work. The CEO would rather avoid conversations that might make him uncomfortable than take a stand for anything that might alienate some individuals that come from a similar background to his own. - No life insurance, no disability insurance, no 401k matching. - A product that needs a LOT of work to succeed. - For all of the talk about the company's core values, they often fail to live up to them. - While the work environment can often be open and down-to-earth to a refreshing degree, it can often get quite unprofessional and cringey - it's not uncommon for people to begin openly weeping in large group presentations, because they are so (uncritically) devoted to the company and its mission. For some employees, it's very much a cult, and it can be alienating if you don't buy into the cult to the same extent. - The business/growth plan seems to be constantly changing on the fly without adequate advanced planning. - Much of the work seems to be devoted to putting out fires, rather than building a sustainable and high-quality product. - Little room for advancement to leadership roles.
