Pros
The people. So many employees say they’re only staying because of the people they get to work with. Being able to lean on one another through all of the chaos is the only way to survive.
Cons
The below list isn’t exhaustive, that would require a novel. 1. Ariel and his leadership team drive the “culture” of the company and that’s the problem. He is incredibly moody (various shades of terrible) and changes his mind regularly, leading to abrupt pivots that require you to drop everything you’ve been working on for weeks and start from scratch. The chaos that he creates is completely unnecessary and sets the business back regularly. We close offices and fire everyone only to reopen them shortly after. We have our 401k match and then we don’t (but other nonsensical perks, usually benefiting HQ, can stay). He randomly decided to start requiring employees to be in the office because he doesn’t trust them to work remotely, and threatened badge checks. He implemented “e-club” which is essentially an excuse for all of the men he works most closely with to go on an all expense paid trip to Cabo, while the rest of the company is told they cannot have backfills for the roles they desperately need to fill. 2. Inequity: the company could not be considered one that is diverse, and Thomas (former CFO) decided to get rid of the DEI leader, as well as the rest of the L&D team. Couldn’t make it any clearer that development isn’t important. 3. None of his direct reports have a backbone to speak up to him, and regularly use “well Ariel said to do it, so we have to do it” as an excuse for forcing their teams to fire people for no reason. 4. IPO continues to be pushed out. It’s a carrot that is dangled to lure people in, but if the company keeps going in this direction (valuation falling by half), there won’t be any value to the shares. We’ve had so much c-suite turnover, our exec team is a bunch of white men +2 women (one who has absolutely no business having her title) and one who just started.