For YEARS, WillowTree was, hands down, the BEST place to work. Leadership cared about employees. They actually LISTENED to us when we told them things. I was here for 5 years and had never seen leadership or management caught in even a half-truth, much less a full lie. They actually put their money where their mouth was and TOOK CARE of us, for years.
And then we got bought. I thought maybe, if there was a place that could survive a buyout, it would be WillowTree. I was wrong. Very wrong.
Seemingly overnight, we became a police-state corporate hellscape. Leadership, who (again -- for 5 YEARS) I'd never seen caught in even a half-truth, blindsided us with layoffs after months of telling us they wouldn't be happening. The NEXT DAY, leadership was telling us "We know we need to rebuild your trust." Like, what? You're gonna slap someone in the face and then be like "Oh man, I know you probably don't trust me right now." So insulting. And from that day forward, it was an entirely different company, with fun occurrences such as:
- I'd mention something in confidence to someone and, next thing I knew, leadership was breathing down my neck about it.
- I was strung along for 6 months waiting for a promotion. I was made to do a significant amount of paperwork to get the promotion. 3 TIMES. I didn't get the promotion.
- We did a daily icebreaker for the company. I posted a completely innocuous one (that had been used before) asking people's favorite way to waste time online. Someone (high enough in leadership that they should have known better) took a screenshot and reported me straight to one of the highest members of leadership and said that my question could clearly be misconstrued as encouraging people to waste time online ON COMPANY TIME (?!?!). Said leader took it seriously and it ended up as official feedback on my record.
- Leadership spent all day every day gaslighting everyone by pretending that we were the same exact company we'd always been (and if you don't believe me on this one, just read any of the comments WillowTree leadership has left on reviews since June -- it's like they're not even reading the comments)
- After weaponizing the trust they built with us over the course of years to keep us complacent while they figured out who they were going to lay off, they also had the audacity to start what they called a dedication to "radical transparency." (And you can see this being mentioned as replies to several recent reviews). As though we employees were just going to forget that they lied to us when it was most convenient for them? Once again, very insulting that they considered us THAT naive.
- Leadership, under the guise of the aforementioned "radical transparency," started holding the threat of more layoffs over our heads to make us work harder, like we couldn't see what they were doing.
And this is a short list of just the last few months. All of this kills me to type. I was absolutely in LOVE with WillowTree. It was different for a long time. There was a time when I thought I'd retire here. But alas, it was not to be so and I recently left the company because of how bad things have become.
So yea, you've been warned. Do not work here.
