There's so much wrong here, but the new CEO is frankly quite barbaric. The fact that he is also the main investor makes it even stranger -- and, in my view, wrong -- that he now holds the CEO role which he appointed to himself, for the following reasons:
- The CEO’s primary incentive is liquidity, not the long-term health of the company. No matter how commercetools might respond publicly to this on this review, it’s clear in practice. We understand that an eventual exit is the goal, but employees are being made to suffer in pursuit of it.
- Decisions consistently prioritize valuation over people: aggressive layoffs right before Christmas, benefit cuts like work-from-abroad which for such a global company was important and generally a normal benefit to have in this day and age, and a rigid return-to-office mandate.
- There is little meaningful governance or challenge, as the CEO effectively answers to himself. We've also heard that he disregards when people try to challenge him.
- Employee voices are dismissed or treated as inconvenient. For example, during an open “ask me anything” session, many important questions were avoided in favor of less pressing ones. While the call ran over time, it was clear which topics were being sidestepped.
- When employees later spoke up about benefit cuts -- such as the removal of the work-from-abroad scheme -- leadership seemed surprised and irritated, apparently not expecting "Europeans to be so vocal".
- We've also had a forced return to the office three days a week and monitoring of log-in behavior, as if employees were children. This is particularly frustrating given that productivity is high and growth is up apparently, this is not a workforce that slacks off. Also a key benefit of ours used to be flexibility... should take that off the website now.
There is much more I could say, but honestly, it’s no longer worth my energy. I’d rather spend my time looking for a new job... which is probably what they're hoping some of us do so that they don't have to continue to lay us off in January and look bad.
