Good benefits, terrible leadership - Anonymous employee Stack Overflow Employee Review

-Leadership is very siloed and hypocritical. -Sales run organization Before going any further, I do want to mention Stack is a good company to work for, with good benefits, and a pretty decent work-life balance. That being said, for any potential candidates looking to work here, please read the following and take all of the 4/5 star ratings you see here with a grain of salt. Let me begin with the round of layoffs Stack recently underwent where 10% of its workforce was let go in May after specifically mentioning, in a company town hall earlier in the year, that mass layoffs were not going to be an option and that people were central to the company’s success. What’s really upsetting, is that those layoffs came after a company wide multi-million dollar in-person meetup, where everyone was flown out, put up in a hotel, and included team events on Stack’s tab. In that same town hall that we had earlier in the year, Prashanth (CEO) mentioned the challenging economic climate and emphasized the company’s path to profitability. At the end of the town hall, several people mentioned if cancelling the "in-person” portion of meetup was discussed and suggested making it virtual instead to save money. Matt Gallatin’s (CFO) response to this was, that because the meetup was planned for in 2022, that money had already been accounted for and was not part of the outlined "path to profitability”. He then also mentioned that Stack believes in the value of everyone meeting and interacting with one another in person and cited how great it is for morale and team bonding. 2 weeks after the meetup happened, Prashanth sent a company wide email letting everyone know once again, of the tough economic climate and that Stack would be going through a round of layoffs. As someone who was fortunate enough to survive through this round, I can assure you with full confidence that morale is at an all time low, any bonds formed during the meetup are pretty much non-existent, and I personally know of a few people who have begun looking for greener pastures (myself included). While I completely understand this from a business prospective, I and many of my fellow Stackers, agree that the way it was handled was terrible. How could you in good conscience remind everyone of the tough economic climate, knowing the company just held a multi-million dollar meetup, and then in the same breath mention needing to cut expenses? Next point: It’s a sales run organization. Yes, there are leadership teams in place, but they’re more for show than anything. The priority is making sure that sales hits its numbers and that everyone is supporting them. Their numbers by the way, are always changing. Every quarter they have new, higher numbers to achieve, putting pressure on, not only the sales team, but everyone else as well. It’s also not scalable. There’s no way to constantly increase your goals, every quarter forever. Eventually, you’ll either have everyone who is interested in your product/service as a customer or you’ll have to get your existing customers to pay more. Final point: There’s really nothing innovative or special about Stack’s product offerings (a major reason why sales goals are always going up). Stack Overflow for Teams, for example, is essentially just the public (and free) instance of Stack Overflow’s site, tailored specifically to a client willing to pay for it. The client in turn, gets a private instance of Stack Overflow that is specific to their organization where employees can exchange knowledge, ask questions etc. So basically, it’s Slack. Not to mention sites like Reddit, where countless subreddits exist that are dedicated to programming, development, AI/ML (the list goes on), where you have access to the same information. Stack’s only claim to fame is that they were essentially the first company to serve a very specific audience, and gamify it through the use of “reputation” points. The company is honestly just resting on its laurels and doing very little to come up with “new” offerings. They’re really just taking what they already have and rebranding it as something new and trying to find any client with deep enough pockets to sucker into buying. If you made it this far congrats and thanks for reading! Hopefully this helped shine a light on some of the day to day happenings and helps you make a decision either way.