Regrets. I’ve never seen a place with so many people that have regrets about leaving their last gig to come to here. Or such a high percentage that leave before a year.
Little respect for expertise. It doesn’t matter what you know or how much experience you have – there will always be a leadership team member or toady that talks louder than you and carries the day.
Cronyism. Part of the SpaceX crowd? Friend of an ELT member? If you’re not ‘connected’ you'll feel like an outsider.
Discrimination. By gender, by age. Saying it’s a startup or it’s tech is no excuse. This company is seven years old, so it’s only a startup by revenue.
Leadership carousel. Leadership has high turnover like the rest of the company, organization changes are common, the right combination is never found and the prevailing attitude toward employees is disdain. The one constant that ‘leads’ all this – the CEO.
Money to burn. Where to start? Everywhere you look. Conference rooms decorated with props and video animations to match their name. Sub Zero and Wolf appliances in the kitchens. A 5 year anniversary jacket designed by a Beverly Hills ‘tailor to the stars’. And months after buying and installing the appliances and conference room props – two locations closed – appliances and props were just more money blown. And plenty of people lost jobs because of the burn rate.
Exaggeration, misdirection, subterfuge. Finding the truth here is like finding the money card in a three card monte game . Ask a lot of questions during your interview – the answers you get will be what they hope is true in the future, but it’s not what's true now. Be prepared to hear a lot about the nap room, fitness center and massage day, as that sounds better than what's going on with the business. See "Blur the focus" next.
Blur the focus. When the products take forever to finish because of mismanagement, make some cool demos, have meetings with important people who want their picture taken with the product, go to South by South Lawn and claim the President invited you, go to trade shows and claim to have taken over the show. Burn resources to keep up appearances.
A sad, distrustful place run by a leadership team that’s totally miscast for the work they need to do.