The Venture Capital Vultures are circling overhead
Pros
+ Somehow, WEX continues to hire great people. And generally, they treat each other well in the rank-and-file, and protect each other. + The pay is middling, for now, but creeping toward the lower end. + I've personally been able to maintain work/life balance, but I know many struggle and their feelings are completely valid. + The departure of the CPO (HR director) was a huge improvement that is evident in how communications and behaviors are already changing for the better, at least in that org.
Cons
- I keep hearing from senior leadership how AI will fix everything and is the future. But they never seem to know, or explain, how. That work is left up to the drones, who then get to wonder if they'll be next to be chopped due to--you guessed it--AI and shifting jobs to other locations like Brazil or India where the employees are much cheaper. I don't say outsourcing because, technically, WEX has a global presence and offices in these locations. But...we all know what it is. It's money. Also, every townhall meeting someone asks about layoffs and leadership won't commit to no further layoffs. - With every quarter that passes, I become less convinced about the leadership's vision. Our shareholders, despite being told by the CFO that we go for 'quality, long-term investors,' seem to only care about the short term, and how WEX compares to competitiors. On top of that, there are now activist investors taking large enough stakes in the company to try and oust the CEO and other veteran boardmembers (this is publicly available information). I am not sure whether that would be a positive or negative at this point, but I do know that more change would be really damaging to the company. - Technical debt continues increasing and payroll shrinks. - We hear regularly about the need for new products and innovations, but we don't have the time to make them (or the resources) and it feels like we will never have the opportunity. "AI" isn't a new product and isn't going to save the company, especially if every gain from it is swallowed into appeasing shareholders by removing payroll. I honestly don't believe we have much in the realm of new profitable things (despite some new-ish products going live to small successes) in the pipeline. If we do, they communicate them very poorly to everyone. - Change. Change, change, change. Several orgs have been going through nonstop change management and reorgs for 5 years or longer, at this point. There is no stability, so things are perpetually muddy in terms of who owns what, where responsibility is, and what can actually improve.
