Toxic, Discriminatory Culture — Women Leaders Beware - Anonymous Rohirrim Employee Review

Growing startup building real, meaningful tech with a hardworking and high-integrity culture

Working 50-60 hours per week and solving problems is not for everyone, but velocity is crucial to build an enduring company of value

The employees in the trenches are kind, talented, and hardworking.

It is difficult to fully capture the gravity of my experience at Rohirrim, but I feel a responsibility to do so because future investors, partners, and employees deserve to know what they are walking into. There is a lot I could talk about: the organizational chaos, the ineffective and inexperienced leadership, the lack of professionalism, the state of the products, and a pervasive culture of toxicity. However, I will focus on the issue that affected me most directly: blatant, systematic gender discrimination. Over a period of 14 months, Rohirrim terminated every woman in a leadership position at the company, one after another. During that same period, one male leader was impacted. One would expect any organization to recognize the impact of such a pattern, if not out of principle then at minimum for reputational reasons. Rohirrim did not. The leadership team, insulated by arrogance, had been made aware of this issue on multiple occasions and chose not to course-correct. Instead, they implemented measures designed to shield themselves from accountability, allowing the mistreatment of women to continue without consequence. The pattern is consistent and unmistakable: the moment a woman challenges a man in a position of power, she is gone — sometimes within days. In many cases, these are top performers who received strong performance reviews just weeks prior. Women are routinely dismissed, talked over, insulted, yelled at, excluded, and scapegoated. Many found that the only way to have their ideas heard was to channel them through a male colleague. Further compounding this dynamic, male leaders regularly gathered at a shared apartment near the office, an environment entirely absent of female leadership, where significant company decisions were made informally and late into the night. Those decisions were announced the following day with no opportunity for women to weigh in. My advice to anyone considering a relationship with Rohirrim is to run. There is no good outcome to be had by anyone doing business with them in any capacity.