It's a good thing that Yardzen is a design company because outward appearances are all that matter to the leadership team.
During your interview, you will meet a small selection of people who can sell low pay, a lack of work-life balance, and a company running on fumes as an opportunity.
As soon as you start, you will find that the founders don't practice the work-life balance they preach and enjoy asking for large projects on Friday that are due on Monday. If you live within three hours of the SF Bay Area, they will also guilt you into doing team-building hikes and dinners because the veneer of team cohesion is more important than putting in the work required for a healthy, functioning workplace. They will pay for the dinner but not your mileage or time.
You will meet talented, easygoing people, and, after just a few weeks, you will wonder why they are at Yardzen.
For some time, leadership was able to float constant chaos and bad behavior from the founders as a regular part of a rapidly growing startup and temper dissatisfaction with loyalty claims and big promises to take care of people once we made it.
However, the first road bump showed that the executive team is only loyal to themselves. Like many other reviews have pointed out, a panicked C-team when on a tremendous hiring spree only to have to lay off ~30% of the company. Of course - no one in leadership was affected, and they misled everyone working at Yardzen about their financial solvency until some of the biggest cheerleaders for Yardzen found themselves laid off via revoked log-in access.
That led to our current lopsided hierarchy - managers with almost no one to manage. Key positions go without backfills because Yardzen can't afford to fill them. There are no directors in HR or Product - if that's not a red flag, I don't know what is.
