Personal Growth Opportunity - Chief of Staff Bettermode Employee Review

Colleagues are good people. Hybrid work model.

Leadership issues: Each founder has a different take on where the product should go, and they’re not aligned. This causes major confusion across teams and leads to wasted effort. One founder mostly brags about his podcast and frequently changes direction without clear rationale. This creates a sense of instability. Internally. It is evident that even he isn’t sure what the product should be. Lack of originality: Much of the product seems inspired by other popular platforms. While that's not inherently bad, it's misleading when leadership claims the product quality and original thinking is “on par with Apple”. The execution just doesn’t reflect that. Toxic culture: There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes maneuvering. Backchannel conversations and sudden reversals are common. Trust is low, and employees are often left out of key decisions until it's too late. These things happen at larger companies, but they are able to do this with extremely small number of employees. Zero diversity: The team is overwhelmingly from one geographic background. There’s no real effort to build an inclusive or diverse culture, Lying: The CEO is a serial liar. He is good at saying things that you want to hear and feel good. He will deceive you whenever he needs to. Do not trust this person.

The only two pros were a few of my colleagues the the clients.

Red flags from the start of my employment. When they sent me my contract it said I'd be a contractor for the first three months of my probation period with no benefits. Something that was not mentioned during the interview process. I quickly learned that this is due to the fact that there is very high turn over. There is no diversity. If you look at all of their currently employees you will see that the majority are from the same country and new to Canada. I also question some of the newer reviews as one mentioned how great HR is. I find that strange as there was no HR department and there still isn't. One of the co-founders fired the majority of the marketing team and openly bragged about how he could do their job on top of building the product. Pay is below market and if you stay with them for a few years they'll give you a modest raise and a bump in your title to keep you happy. They know the market is tough right now and use it to their benefit. We had a team meeting where one of the co-founders spent more time talking about his podcast and the different type of sports he plays than the company and current projects we were working on. The infighting between the co-founders is also comical as they have vastly different ideas on where they want to take the company.