Toxic From The Top Down - Anonymous employee Black Rifle Coffee Employee Review

The company changes directions every five minutes, and leadership has no clear direction on what they want to focus on. Everyone seems stressed out and many departments are constantly understaffed at corporate, or even underpaid. It’s shocking to have to beg for additional people to get hired on your team, and then you realize that everyone else is doing the same thing. They call it startup culture, but the company is more than 7 years old. Leadership seems to change its mind on what they want just about every week, whether its starting a new podcast and lifestyle brand and then renaming it, signing new partnerships just because with no forethought into whether it makes sense or consulting anyone, or flippant statements made to the press that jeopardize employees and the company itself. Our CEO cares but nobody feels like they can tell him no. I can’t say the rest of visible leadership actually cares about the company employees. This all leads to a groupthink environment that trickles down into cross functional meetings between departments and permeates the entire culture, where you’re asked to speak up in meetings but then your ideas are shot down and leadership and upper management just do what they want anyway. Departments don’t talk to each other and there are no clear processes for many things we do. If there are, then they are horribly thought out ones, or they are great but aren’t consistently followed or implemented. I’ve seen multiple inept and extremely toxic people get hired and promoted multiple times, getting recognition all while everyone around them dreaded working with them and they made our jobs that much harder. I’ve seen good hardworking people let go because of toxic new hires that act like tyrants and somehow manipulate leadership into getting everything they want and taking credit for other’s work. It never ceases to astound me some of the people hired in upper management and executive positions and what they’ve gotten away with, eventually getting shuffled around into a position where they don’t interact with others or finally get fired after causing everyone else nothing but misery. Meanwhile, loyal hardworking employees aren’t rewarded with promotion or growth opportunities, instead having things dangled over their heads that often never materialize, or promotions or additional responsibilities without a pay raise that should go along with it. Here at corporate, they want to bend you until you break. The company just went public and we are understaffed without much in raises, equity, or recognition beyond a title change that just means more backbreaking work for slightly more pay. The best part is the culture of silence around these issues perpetuated by leadership saying things on company-wide calls like having a negative attitude is a fireable offense. Like I said, they want a groupthink environment. They also somehow don’t have the money to reward their hardworking loyal employees that sacrificed years of hard work to get here. The hardworking ones that do get promoted have to make their entire life revolve around work and live and breathe the brand, working backbreaking hours, sucking up to upper management, and having an extremely unhealthy work life balance.