Toxic Culture, Inept Leadership, Flailing Product
Pros
Zapproved provides a lot of superficial perks to compensate for low pay, inept leadership, crappy products, and a toxic culture. These perks include free snacks, cold-brew on draft, and a flexible PTO policy. There are some really nice people across the company who are fun to commiserate with during happy hour.
Cons
Zapproved’s market leadership, which is built almost entirely on likability and customer goodwill, is rapidly eroding. Competitors are continuously innovating and improving. Meanwhile, Zapproved has no product vision, can’t commit to a single course of action for longer than 3 months, and hasn’t shipped a meaningful product release in nearly two years. The most talented, experienced, and intelligent employees are fleeing (or have fled) the company in droves due to the incredibly toxic culture and inept leadership. Lazy senior leaders empower abusive, inept middle-managers to berate, belittle, and gaslight employees and peers without consequence. Employees who report these abusive behaviors to senior leaders and HR are marginalized, stripped of responsibility, and eventually pushed out. Some departments have experienced 100% turnover ever year (for years!) due to this hapless, problematic leadership. Zapproved keeps payroll costs low by systematically recruiting and underpaying employees from under-represented communities. This exploitation is particularly egregious when coupled with the self-congratulatory BS they spew about their DE&I program. True training and growth opportunities are limited. People who get promotions often don’t get raises for months, which stems from a company policy of “proving you can handle the additional responsibilities of the job” before getting paid accordingly. Compounding all of these issues is an unwillingness on the part of the CEO or senior leaders to accept any level of responsibility for the disfunction they have created.
