- Incredibly passionate CEO has lost his ability to temper his frustration and anger with recognition of “what’s working”. In the past 12 months this has become a place where no one is safe from being yelled at publicly. Ego has always been a piece of the puzzle that folk have dealt with for years because the anger and humiliation was generally rooted in an actual solvable problem that people weren’t going after fast enough or at all. Now it’s the norm to be berated no matter how well your category is performing. We are using “rarely satisfied” as a crutch for “nothing is ever good enough and you need to do more with less.”
- Pay for employees that have been with the company for a long time is no longer competitive with the market. For the amount that is asked of employees, this used to be a huge perk - now it is run of the mill from a comp perspective and not worth the relentless demands that have only gotten worse with growth. This year’s merit was not a salary increase, but RSUs that are distributed quarterly mapped to a market average increase. Surface level seems cool to give everyone a piece of the pie but it is complex and not coming to fruition from a stock price standpoint. Clearly done as a way to save on OpEx with the global tariff situation but fell on deaf ears.
- Some real misses on executive hiring in the past 18 months. The CEO and the People team do not know how to properly assess culture fit in the interview process. Something is broken here and it needs to change.
- Micromanagement at every level masked by SharkNinja mottos and “the way we do things and we’re not going to apologize”. You are setting no one up for success by hiring VERY SMART FOLKS and not letting them craft their style within the pillars of what makes SharkNinja such a powerhouse. It has to be a combination of what works and what’s new.
