Work Environment
• When I first started, I had to fight tooth and nail just to get the design software I needed to do my job. I actually had to create my first few wireframes using PowerPoint, which is absurd.
• Getting approval for basic hardware like larger flat-panel monitors—a standard need for design work—was also a huge hurdle. A good company should provide employees with the tools they need to do their jobs, no questions asked. Unless an expense is excessive, there’s no reason to be stingy over a $200–300 monitor.
• There seems to be at least one person in IT who enjoys holding authority over hardware and software requests. It often felt like power-tripping for its own sake.
Culture
• The culture at York is terrible, and leadership knows it. They’ve made no effort to retain employees or fix the systemic issues.
◦ Even HR is aware of this. The fact that York never responds to Glassdoor reviews says everything—they simply don’t care.
• The turnover rate is astounding. The manager I initially reported to left after about a month. Several developers followed soon after, and the exodus never slowed down.
◦ In under three years, I reported to six different managers, which is absurd.
◦ The original product team I joined essentially dissolved due to turnover and constant restructuring. Without a stable product team, there’s been no clear direction or vision.
◦ Eventually, the other designer and I ended up reporting to a lead developer—not an ideal setup for building strong products, especially since he had no managerial experience.
◦ During multiple reorganizations, we were completely overlooked. No one discussed career growth or promotions with us, even as others around us advanced.
• York implemented a mandatory three-day in-office policy over a year ago, which was completely unnecessary. When I started, I worked almost fully remote and came in only as needed—it worked great. The entire product team functioned well remotely, stayed productive, and met deadlines.
◦ The belief that employees must be in an office to be productive is outdated. York’s decision to follow the return-to-office trend shows how little they care about what actually works for their teams.
◦ It also felt like they just wanted to justify the expensive office space in Greenwood Village.
◦ Some people may not work well from home, and that’s fine—address those cases individually. Don’t punish everyone else because of a few bad apples.
◦ I was far more productive and happier working from home, and I know many others felt the same.
• Let’s also talk about the York x Rockies sponsorship. Instead of spending millions of dollars every year to sponsor a baseball team, how about giving employees better bonuses?
◦ Last year’s bonuses were around 3 percent, which barely covers the cost of living increase.
◦ I’m sure the C-level executives still received their usual hefty bonuses.
◦ Take care of your employees first. Prioritize them over sponsoring a struggling baseball team.
◦ To make it worse, when the deal was announced, employees still had to pay for Rockies swag. Nothing was free—not even a hat or shirt.
Design
• York doesn’t value the software product or user experience at all. The focus is entirely on customer mission needs, with no real concern for product quality.
• They continue to pay an outside design agency to create mission logos, maintain an outdated website, and produce marketing materials—even though they had two in-house designers with strong branding experience who could have handled it all and saved money.
◦ The Dragoon mission logo, for example, is one of the worst designs I’ve ever seen. It looks like a mash-up of bad clipart and early AI-generated art.
• If you have an in-house design team, use them. We would have loved to refresh York’s website—which looks like it’s from the late 1990s—and design better mission badges ourselves.
Do yourself a favor and stay far far away from this company. It’s not going to get any better.
