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I'd like to sincerely thank you for offering this honest feedback, and for doing it in a constructive way outlining ways that we can improve. As a cofounder, I'm disappointed in the company and in myself that we let you down in these ways, but getting feedback like this is genuinely helpful and something we will pay close attention to. I wish that you had brought these issues to our attention while you were still at the company, but better late than never and we would still be very interested in having a dialogue with you about your experience where you can go into specifics and we can learn more.
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To show that this hasn't fallen on deaf ears, I'd like to respond to your feedback point by point with what we are doing to make Scribd a better place to work.
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▶ Talented, smart, fun people working there - type of people who will go on to start new successful startups ◀
True! Six successful startups that came from Scribd and counting!
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▶ Managers pull rank to squash ideas.◀
It's true, we have been guilty of this in the past. As you know, companies unfortunately can't execute on every good idea that comes up - there are simply never enough resources to go around. Therefore, managers have to strike a balance between making sure that all ideas are genuinely heard and considered, while also making tough decisions on which ideas to pursue.
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We try to make good decisions about this, but sometimes we're wrong. Just as bad, sometimes when we don't pursue an idea, we don't do a good enough job of explaining why. This is bad because, among other things, this means that next time, the same person may be less likely to bring up a good idea, causing us to miss out on the creativity from the broader team.
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While I don't have a silver bullet solution to this problem, it is something on our minds and something we want to do a better job of. We tried doing idea suggestion boxes, but no one used them, so that doesn't seem to be the answer. Next up we're going to try doing more product brainstorming sessions and having a more formal and transparent process for evaluating product ideas, and we're going to keep trying things and getting better about this.
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▶ Product decisions often based on engineer opinions instead of user research.◀
Well, I'd have to agree with you here, and to be perfectly honest, this may be one of those things where we will to agree to disagree.
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It's not to say that we don't believe user research should play a role in product decisions: definitely, we think it should. But there is an avid debate in the product community about how much a company should derive its product decisions by listening to users and how much by having internal product owners who live and breathe the product make these decisions. Apple is famous for espousing the philosophy that companies should basically ignore their users' direct feedback and make their own decisions.
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That said, we're not as radical as Apple and we don't think we're Steve Jobs, so I agree that doing user research is important. We're working on growing the product and UX side of the team so we can do more user surveys and live user feedback sessions.
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This was the biggest theme from our most recent employee survey and we heard you loud and clear. We've hired a decorator and are completely remodeling the office space to be more professional.
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▶ Reaching out ◀
I would be grateful if you would be willing to engage in a dialog with us about your experiences at Scribd and how we can improve the organization. We are extremely receptive to constructive criticism and constantly looking to make our company better. As a former employee, please feel free to reach out to me directly, either with your real name or anonymously so we can learn from your feedback.
