Red Flags:
• Extremely-high turnover rate - This is particularly true for some positions. Positions that have left (on their own) in the past year include: 6 VPs/Directors, half the product team, some of the marketing team, half of sales management, half of finance, the entirety of Business Development, a fair amount of sales reps, several engineers, several project managers, and more. I can’t name specific titles (according to Glassdoor guidelines,) but know that these were many positions (about 30-40 people out of <200) across the entire company. Some people didn’t even make it a year!
• Layoffs - Volusion lays people off EVERY YEAR, without fail. The new CEO believes in "freeing up" 10% of staff budgets every year, to make room for new hires. Sounds to me like he's got a budgeting problem. They just laid off the remainder of the product team, as well as several marketing, IT, sales, and client services. Last year they laid off about 30% of marketing, 30% of client services, 20% of engineering, and several each of Sales/Support reps. This leads to….
• Capacity/Workload Imbalances - Oftentimes, when someone leaves, is fired/laid off, etc. instead of backfilling the position, the responsibilities of that role get absorbed by teammates. One of the main reasons Volusion doesn’t backfill is because they can’t: when someone more senior/experienced leaves who has many responsibilities, Volusion can’t afford a new hire with the same qualifications. Not only does this cause capacity issues, but other employees are now overworking, while still earning the same pay. Eventually the overworked and now overqualified and underpaid employee will easily get the same job somewhere else for more appropriate pay and title. The real capacity issues, though, come from Volusion’s engineering department. These engineers are fantastic, so it’s a real shame they don’t have the support they need. The full time team headcount floats around <10% of the company, which for a company of ~200 (it’s hard to keep track of with all the layoffs), is not a lot. So, while the executive team creates loftier goals every year, and competitors continue to lap Volusion 100x over in terms of features/functionality/partnerships/integrations, Volusion relies on this very talented yet small group of engineers to keep the engine sputtering. Volusion does buy them donuts sometimes, so that makes up for it, right? Volusion boasts the term “work smarter not harder,” but in most cases at Volusion, small input does not equal expected large output (it’s a hard operations problem, I know.) Because of this...
• Volusion hasn't released a full feature in over a year - Now, it depends how you define a “full feature,” but here, I’ll define it as “stable 90% of the time, available for all qualifying customers, can be used now on the platform/app catalog, and hasn’t been replaced by a new, similar feature with less functionality.” If you go by that definition…then yeah, nothing new has been released. Some MVP apps/features were released temporarily, only to have been taken off the platform because of stability issues, bugs, poor relationships with contract developers/vendors, or “it just plain ole don’t work.” Last year, Volusion increased prices on most of their licenses, sometimes doubling or more the monthly fee customers pay (so they can inflate their “growth” numbers.) To offset this, they promised customers a specific new feature, but unfortunately, do to capacity, shifting goals, and all-around general shadiness, that promise was not kept.
• Poor Quality, Expensive, non-functioning Contractor Work - Volusion tends to outsource important features, apps, etc. to get them done quickly, and are shocked when they don’t turn out so well. In the past year, 3-4 different large apps/features/relationships have been shut down for various reasons including inability of Volusion to communicate, provide complete requirements, or meet contractual agreements (including paying the contractors). This leads to the issue above and...
• Nepotism - Speaking of poor quality, expensive, or non-functioning contractor work, the employee handbook states “Volusion will not hire any close relative to any legal, finance, or HR position,” so it’s quite surprising that they still do. It also states that “relatives of anyone in a management position will not be hired into any position, even if reporting to another manager.” Contradiction is a common theme at Volusion when it comes to policies and the culture code. It seems the only way to get a contract gig (or a newly made C-Suite position) is to personally know the founder or CEO.
• Founder Over-involvement - Speaking of, the founder emulates Elon Musk, but fails to execute. He says things like “Tesla sells cars without actually having cars” only, bro, Volusion isn’t selling Teslas. He started the company over 20 years ago, and has consistently gotten in the way. He was CEO, then he wasn’t, then he was again, and now he’s not again. He doesn’t even have a job title anymore except “Founder,” which means he gets to poke his nose into anything you’re doing at any given time, blow it up, and leave you to pick up the pieces so he can move onto the next project or person to bully. He mansplains a lot, and likes to put words in your mouth. You leave conversations by agreeing with him, except you don’t really know what you just agreed to. He likes to send Wikipedia articles or links to dictionary websites to explain phrases that are quite common. He went to a few management training classes, and he says some of the things you’re “supposed to say” as a manager, but his actions speak louder than words. And the fact that he has been removed from people management positions several times should scream. He is a walking contradiction of the company culture code that he wrote - specifically because he picks and chooses phrases to use against you, or your decisions. Ultimately, the final decision-making power comes down to him and the CEO, and if you have the “wrong answers” you will have to change them quickly, or prepare for the next round of layoffs.You have to wonder why so many people, especially upper management, have left recently. It’s hard to work for people who don’t respect your experience or role that THEY hired you for.
• Lack of/unrealistic/shifting strategy & vision, impossible to execute - It’s hard to go into much detail here, since the overall vision/strategy/goals/”Mountains”(as they are now being called, which is just another word for...goals…) change every 3-6 months. This means that what Volusion builds, how they market, and how they sell changes at the same rate. Even if you meet your goals, you might not be safe from the layoffs.
• Micromanagement and manipulation from Executives - you can basically copy and paste what was said about the Founder here, but also apply it to the CEO and some of the executive team, or whatever is left of it.
• 3-4 Customers run the company - from a feature development perspective. So much money/work/effort is put into keeping these customers (most of which pay very little or nothing at all) on the Volusion platform(s). Most of the work spent making these customers happy is not scalable or repeatable (cc: Capacity & haven’t put out new features), so while Volusion saves the crown jewels, they spend even more money/effort begging or tricking other customers from leaving. If it were easier to switch platforms, most of the customers would have left by now. And since Volusion can’t seem to put parity features out fast enough, it’s only a matter of time.
