An analysis of KiwiCo’s subculture - Anonymous employee KiwiCo Employee Review

KiwiCo is a bit confusing because it is a children and family brand yet the experience of working there can be so completely opposite. The root cause of all of KiwiCo’s issues seem to stem from the very top with the CEO. I can’t say anything about her character as I never worked directly with her and can only point to the culture she created. Many of the managers at KiwiCo are frankly, inexperienced and seem surprised to be in the situation they are in. In fact, quality or ability don’t seem important compared to either being in the company early or being someone the CEO likes. This idea of favoritism over ability gets pushed down to the managers and their respective teams. In fact, my team had such a case of favoritism that every single person under the manager fit the manager’s exact demographic. And when a potential new hire with strong credentials was recommended to our team, that didn’t fit the demographic, the manager of my team was open in opposing them during the interview process because it wasn’t their choice. Favoritism leads to a strong subculture and lack of diversity. When entering KiwiCo’s office space, it is very clear in the lack of diversity and the strong subculture that permeates throughout. The subcultures of many of the teams lead to a strange toxic and cliquey culture that can only be experienced to be understood. Lunchtimes can feel very high-school-like with cliques sitting with each other and a feeling of being judged if you aren’t in with your team’s subculture. Another thing I can point back to the CEO is this top-down approach that many other reviews touch upon. Each employee is given a role and set of tasks and veering outside of that role can lead to reprimands from management - something that is strange to see in a startup. Another KiwiCo quirk is that the HR team doesn’t watch out for employees when disputes arise as is typical, but is used to represent management in defending the company from attacks. In fact this idea of KiwiCo defending itself from attacks can be explained when my manager told the team: not to write negative glassdoor reviews because they and the CEO will find out and know who did it. The final point I want to make here, and this may be related to this idea of favoritism over ability, but many of the managers seem to care little about KiwiCo’s success as a whole. Rather, they care about their particular team only. When one of the other teams wanted to collect data on productivity from my team, my manager openly told us not to care about this team’s request. That we should ignore them because they are stupid and the executives won’t know anyways. I think all of these anecdotes can be explained from the top that leads to issues company-wide, such as: an overly top-down approach from management leaving employees with little freedom to be ambitious, an attitude of defending the company from all attacks from outsiders leading to the HR team acting as a company rather than employee defender, and finally, a culture of favoritism, leading to strong subcultures, cliques and a workplace that can only be described as toxic.