1. Undervalues Employees. The basic business model of this company is to keep costs low by hiring inexperienced workers right out of college, people who are optimistic about trying to change the world and who are drawn to a “social good” mission-driven company and are willing to work for comparatively low pay. People who don’t know what to expect from a work environment, who don’t know to ask for overtime pay even when they are legally owed it, and who don’t know what equity is and therefore they get away with offering no equity at all, paying very little in overtime (if they do at all, which they frequently do not, even for non-exempt employees), and failing to provide any professional development.
2. Lack of Training. The management of this company demonstrates relatively little real desire to invest in their employees, likely to the fact that most employees do not stay at the company for more than two years. This results in a lot of impostor syndrome on the part of employees because we are given very little support or training, both on a one-off basis or for our long-term projects. TechChange will often be invited to give talks or workshops, for example, and preparation for these events will usually only start the day of or the day before, which is not enough time. Often managers will also go into client or potential partner meetings with little to no prep work. Sometimes they are able to get away with this lack of preparation, but sometimes you will walk away from these meetings feeling pretty embarrassed. All of the current initiatives for professional development were spearheaded by current employees, not by management, which is a little ironic given that we are a company which predominantly creates professional development trainings.
3. Demoralizing work environment. Because TechChange is very small, the atmosphere of the company is heavily influenced by the tone from the top and recently it seems the CEO has grown uninterested in running the company. He can frequently be seen scrolling through Instagram not paying attention, even on Skype calls with clients and potential clients.
4. Few opportunities for advancement. This is a very flat organization, so there is nowhere to go and not much else to learn once you have been at the organization for a few years, which is why most people leave after a few years. If you work here, you need to aggressively ask for a promotion and higher pay. Upper management will be very hesitant to provide justification for hiring/firing/promotions, etc.
5. Opaque. This is an issue that seems to be getting worse over the years. For example, at the beginning of the company’s history, the COO would send out annual reports detailing the financial progress of the company. They no longer do this. Much of the opacity of the organization is motivated by the COO, who strongly believes it is better to be vague than to be direct, which more often than not leads to bad outcomes. Generally speaking, the COO is a charming man but he will hold everything you ever do wrong against you for your time at the company but never mention a thing to you, even in check-in meetings that specifically about how you can improve. He will almost always just tell you that you’re doing a great job.
6. Poor communication. The managers will often fail to communicate very basic things to the company, such as when new people come on board, when somebody gets a promotion, or when we have changes to our platform or company strategy. Usually they are not actively trying to hide anything, but it makes for a very awkward work environment nonetheless.
7. Miscellaneous. There’s also the usual negative stuff that people complain about at other workplaces, there’s some subtle sexism, inconsistent application of company policies, enforcement of policies which are never written down in the employee handbook, etc.
General advice: This is a great place to work if you’re burnt out after college and want a nice, chill work environment and are able to be part of a deeply flawed organization and not let it get to you. Not the kind of place you want to work if you take your career seriously.
