Not A Place For Professional Sales People - Anonymous employee CoConstruct Employee Review

Hi -- This is from Donny, Founder and CEO at CoConstruct. I actually saw your review after we had our monthly company-wide meeting in July, where I personally walked everyone through how we handle terminations. The vast majority are done with a formal Performance Improvement Plan process, which makes expectations very clear about what needs to be corrected. I also discussed how there are times when we skip that process, yet still handle it fairly, often because it’s a matter of something very serious like harassment, inappropriate behavior, or something that puts someone at risk. Fortunately, those situations are few and far between. But, as I mentioned at the meeting, because we handle these things confidentially, it means it can look like a surprise when someone leaves the company, simply because we’ve done a good job of respecting them by not leaking details of the situation. It sounds like some people you’ve spoken to may not think there was a “good” reason for them to leave the company. Again, because we treat these situations confidentially, they have the liberty to share their viewpoint without the company being in a position to offer a counterpoint. My hope by addressing this in a straightforward manner in a meeting was to alleviate any mystery around the structured process of how someone could be terminated. It’s an unpleasant situation for everyone, but the process itself shouldn’t be a mystery. I am perplexed by the characterization of a “batch of firings.” I don’t even need a full hand to count on my fingers the number of people who have been terminated in recent months. While I’d prefer to not have any of these situations arise, the number of cases has been very small. I also wanted to share a couple of thoughts around your perception that I care more about money than fairness to employees. Given the context of responding to this review, simply stating that I care about fairness to employees probably doesn’t carry much weight. But, let’s pretend that I did care more about money than fairness… recruiting new employees is expensive. We pay staff members who are dedicated to recruiting. We pay to advertise. We take time away from other activities to interview. There’s time spent paying salaries to new hires while we train them and get them up to speed. And, CoConstruct is very selective in our hiring, which raises those costs even more, since most applicants don’t receive job offers. So, it’s extremely costly to terminate someone and then repeat that process to fill their position. Setting fairness aside, if I cared primarily about money, then it’s all the more reason why terminating someone would be a last resort. Finally, it’s personally important to me to address the question of whether sharing ownership with a private equity firm, even with us having a very high growth rate, “wasn’t good enough” for me. That’s akin to receiving a wedding invite and saying, “well, I guess dating wasn’t good enough for them.” Having something good, and committing to make even more of it, isn’t automatically a bad thing. Our team does an incredible job of crafting great software and taking great care of our clients. Most homebuilders and remodelers do not have an all-in-one system like us at all -- and their businesses will be better off if they do. And as proud as I am of what we accomplished in the 12+ years when I bootstrapped CoConstruct and was the sole owner, I’m even more proud that we’re pushing to the next level to bring our system to even more people, faster, to end the chaos in their days and to create rewarding building experiences for them and their clients. Again, I hope the meeting that we had just a few days after your post helped give you a different perspective on your concerns. If not, though, if you don’t feel comfortable coming to me to discuss the concerns, I hope you’ll consider talking to one of our HR folks. Our HR team keeps conversations in confidence, and is directly involved in any performance management issues, so they have any details you’d need to feel comfortable in the security of your position with us.