Pros
Attractive office (pre-Covid) centered downtown with easy access to bus routes.
Cons
I'll summarize my full Textio arc - as it will provide more context to where my journey began and ultimately collapsed into the most unhealthy and harmful professional experience of my career. Conceptually, I love the flagship product. It's what drew me to join the company in the first place. This was consistent with new hires I spoke with, and people subsequently joining Textio thereafter. They had designed and built a beautiful homepage; highlighting the product's core features, impact* (we'll cover this in a bit), and company culture. 2017-18 was the golden age of Textio. The culture was open and vibrant. People were unafraid to make mistakes and propose alternative solutions to challenges, while product iterations and enhancements made sense from gathered feedback. It was a truly dynamic work environment. People in Sales collaborated with folks in Marketing and Data science regularly. I felt like a vital part of the rocket ship (the commonly used metaphor to describe Textio). Yet upon leaving the company - I felt reduced to combustion fuel, incinerated into nothing which could easily be replaced. Mid 2019 is when company culture began to toxify, and questioning the quality of Textio's business impact was cropping up more frequently. However, 2019 concluded with no major shakeups and I was still proud to be at Textio, despite my waning faith in the product. Fast forward to March and Covid rocks every sector of the global economy. Textio had not diversified solutions to combat market fluctuations (the product's success is dependent on a strong hiring economy), as it's in the candidate communication space i.e. job description and recruitment messaging enhancement. Ensuing layoffs were imminent at the start of Q2. People in sales were applying to other roles, as Textio's market viability was looking bleak at best. After speaking to a few current customers I had good rapport with, it was clear that Textio was not able to deliver it's advertised results. This was common. Customers not renewing their subscriptions had always been a major hurdle and it was starting to catch up. Pivots to the product pitch seemed to arise monthly. It only confused people and diminished belief in what they were selling. In the last weeks of my time at Textio, I learned that our Engineering department had asked to discuss how Textio is positioned to customers and prospects in an open forum with Sales, but was blocked. There was a concern from engineers that our product pitch was not consistent with the data. We had an org-wide Zoom call where our CRO was explicit - Q2 was going to be a giant question mark. The CRO explained that the business had no inclination on where they were going to land at a revenue standpoint. This quarter was going to be "experimental" and goals would be re-forecasted after more data was collected. Therefore, "no performance plans could be enacted", as the company didn't have a firm grasp of what quota constitutes a successful (or unsuccessful) quarter during an international pandemic. It wasn't until the middle of Q3 2020 when Sales people from all teams were placed on PIPs (performance plans) for the revenue they generated in Q2. Leadership blatantly went back on their word. I lost the last bit of trust that remained. Each 1:1 I had was an interrogation. I felt attacked and demeaned for 45 minutes. I can't imagine the folks put on harsh PIPs and how miserable their experience must have been. Paired with destructive 1:1s, I was micromanaged into oblivion. I received almost hourly slack check-ins, and this person knew next to nothing about our sales process. It was torturous. I developed irregular sleep patterns and hadn't felt encouraged in months. I had no confidence and realized how real imposter-syndrome was. I also wasn't growing as a professional. Learning and development was substituted for panic-filled notifications. Now at this point, Textio saw a slight boost of inbound leads. During a team-wide call, the CRO concluded that the BLM movement was good for Textio, since more companies were searching for tools to (allegedly) boost their diversity. It was disgusting. To say police brutality targeting African Americans and the subsequent protests were a good thing for business was abhorrent. I was appalled. The CRO then went on to say in a different org-wide meeting that leadership may have been "too reactionary" to Q2 results. In other words, the PIPs were an egregious error. They lied about how people's futures at Textio would be handled. I left shortly after. I can't really articulate the sense of freedom I experienced after walking away from the most agonizing 6 months of my career.
