Pros
* Smart, talented coworkers who are genuinely invested in helping one another succeed. * Flexible work environment. * Your overall experience, work-life balance, and growth opportunities could be good but they are highly dependent on the team and leaders you work with.
Cons
Compensation has become less competitive over time. Lower equity grants, poor stock performance, and compensation practices designed to promote greater pay equity have reduced the company’s ability to meaningfully differentiate and reward top performers. As a manager, it has become increasingly difficult to recognize exceptional performance through compensation. It’s also incredibly disappointing to see how much our culture and trust in leadership has eroded. The recent layoffs themselves are not the issue. Businesses sometimes have to make difficult decisions. The problem is the disconnect between leadership’s messaging and what employees are actually experiencing. The announcement of a new product during the all hands immediately following the layoffs is a perfect example. The hype video was completely out of touch with the moment. While employees are processing the loss of friends and teammates, leadership chooses a high energy product launch that many people feel missed the mark. To his credit, our CEO acknowledged during the call and later in a follow up email that the video did not land as intended. But even his explanation on the call reinforced the disconnect. He said the product is exciting because customers are being asked to do more with fewer resources. That’s a difficult message to hear immediately after laying off roughly 20% of your own workforce. Whether intentional or not, it highlights just how disconnected leadership has become from the employee experience. The disconnect also shows up in everyday communication. Company all hands are filled with “Let’s go!” rally cries, comparisons to the early days of Apple, and even AI-generated Slack profile photos modeled after well-known tech executives. The focus is on building the image of the next great tech company, while many employees are simply trying to navigate constant organizational change with fewer people and more work. Even the more personal updates feel poorly timed. Emails about sharing another international family vacation often arrive immediately after the company’s extended July 4th R&R break, a benefit that many teams in operational functions cannot fully participate in because quarter-end deadlines require them to postpone or cancel their time off. On their own, these moments may seem insignificant. Together, they reinforce the feeling that leadership is disconnected from the day-to-day reality of many employees. Unfortunately, none of this feels isolated. It reflects a broader pattern of communication that is consistently more focused on optimism, branding, and vision than acknowledging difficult realities. Employees can handle tough business decisions. What erodes trust is feeling like leadership does not recognize how those decisions are experienced by the people living through them.
