Advancement here is driven by proximity and likability, not performance or results. When someone reaches the top of the organization from a background with no relevant experience in the company's core function, it tells you everything about how decisions get made and who gets protected when they go wrong. If the company has a standard for skills and expertise, it appears to be applied selectively.
Leadership here is skilled at one thing above all else: protecting itself. When difficult situations arise, the response is rarely accountability. It's reorganization and RIF's. Missed goals and failed strategies are absorbed by the employees who had no hand in making them.
Critical thinking is welcomed here right up until it inconveniences someone with a title. The people positioned to ask hard questions tend to find themselves quietly moved out.
Toxic employees get protected. Hard-working people who genuinely care about the company get discarded. Those who leave tend to either build competing businesses or take their talents to more relevant competitors. After 25 years in business, remarkably few alumni speak fondly of this place. That says everything.
The ego here is extraordinary and entirely disconnected from the results. Leadership is convinced it has all the answers, resistant to outside perspective, logic, or common sense, and quick to blame employees for the consequences of its own poor strategy. The confidence would be admirable if it were earned.
For a company that talks constantly about moving forward, it spends a remarkable amount of energy repeating the same mistakes.
There is a deeply held belief here that the company is special. From the outside looking back, it is less than ordinary in every way that matters except the dysfunction, which is exceptional.
If you're someone who keeps your head down and fits the social dynamic, you may thrive here. If you ask questions, document your contributions carefully.
