Pros
I enjoyed my time with the company. The product was incredibly exciting and was always sold to us as a real disruptor in the hospitality space. My colleagues were incredible and my team was well-equipped for the challenge of scaling the business just as quickly as it had grown in 2023, however, there is a big caveat to all of that.
Cons
At this point, Visiting Media has reportedly laid off somewhere around 25% of employees. Almost everyone on my team hired in early 2023 has been laid off. Whatever growth we saw and were being fed when we were hired, erased. This isn't the shady part. There have been rumors swirling around that Visiting Media was on the verge of losing a major customer which would be a very significant loss for the company. These rumblings started only 1-2 weeks prior to the layoff announcements. We just had an all-company summit where everyone was flown out to Carlton, OR and we had a huge hoo-rah about the health of the business and the future growth we were going to see. By all accounts, the executive leadership was feeding us lies about some bright future that would come crumbling less than 2 months later. The shady thing is that of everyone laid off, it was the executives and ICs with no ties to the previous years of the company. From what we've heard so far, no executive leadership was let go and ICs with ties to Ben the CEO or other core leaders were let go. It leaves a very sour taste in my mouth to believe that completely out of the blue anyone not in the "in" crowd would be let go so suddenly. Nearly entire departments were let go in the midst of what is supposed to be the company's big launch of TrueTourX. I'm left wondering how long they knew the writing was on the wall. I wonder if they lost the major customer. I wonder why certain seemingly less impactful roles were spared while others that actually move the needle but were close with OG leaders were let go. There's a massive gap in transparency that's become very apparent. I would stay away until the dust settles.
