When the new CEO joined InMoment, he made a statement to the entire company at an all hands meeting saying, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” We had a unique and great culture before, but that has since been blown up. Here’s how:
- His first focus after joining the company was in the sales department, which left the major focus on doing whatever it takes to get a deal. This left the development teams in a constant scramble to add features or make changes for prospect A, or prospect B, or client C...
- There have been sweeping organizational changes since he joined, including the layoff of a number of leaders, with some being long time employees that were beloved by team members.
- Recent technology changes have left the engineering team in disarray, including the abolishment of the product management and UX teams, and a shift of the entire development team into several “Agile” teams.
- He brought in a number of his A-team from his previous company, including a full development team in Atlanta, and two tech leaders who live away from the company headquarters, and are only around part-time. This includes his brother who was appointed as the new CTO, who lives in the Atlanta area. They are all very smart and talented men, but it has created a complicated political environment, where it can be difficult to challenge what those trusted members say.
- Politics is very prevalent among leadership, and there are obvious winners and losers.
- There is a high level of micromanagement with multiple bottlenecks for decision making, sometimes including basic development and hiring decisions needing the approval from the CEO himself. The autonomy that once existed is no longer, and there seems to be a lack of trust for individual contributors on the team to make decisions.
- He has pushed these changes across the company with very little transparency, with team members sometimes wondering about job security, unsure about their roles, and an underutilization of some employees after moving them around.
With these changes,
- The development team attrition is alarmingly high. There has not been a local software engineer hire in Salt Lake City in months, while a large number have left and a lot of others are actively looking to leave. Yet, there does not appear to be much concern about the growing loss, or at least action taken to stop the bleeding.
- There has been real concern whether the Salt Lake City office is intended to shrivel up and development move to Atlanta, where the CEO’s A-team resides. This has been denied, but the sentiment is real.
- Overall dissatisfaction is high in departments across the entire company. There are some that have kept an upbeat optimism, but that is definitely the minority.
- The company has changed a lot, and a lot of the youthful exuberance that once rang through the halls has all but disappeared. The office has become quite a somber place.
One more thing:
- InMoment is located right at the South Jordan Frontrunner station, yet no support is offered at all by the company to encourage employees to use transit. Why not? Care to look at how many people walking off the train and into the office building are from Lucid and Pluralsight? Why is that?
