Gem Reviews

The business is not doing well and leadership will blame anyone but themselves. The tactics they want us to use to retain clients were abrasive and damaging… some clients even straight up called it desperate. In November they laid of 30% of the business intending to cut deep and create enough road to get us through 2024. Then after months of being straightforward about their plans to consider lay offs (despite priding themselves on transparency) and the CEO avoiding everyone in the office, they laid off another 40% of the company only 10 months later. I get it, the economy is tough… but how do they expect a company that was nearly 300 people a year ago to produce the same or more with only 100 people left. Not to mention that after laying off and ripping financial security away from colleagues and close friends, the CEO was giddy to announce in the all hands the next day that they would be bringing back two company gatherings a year. Make that make sense… I’d also be remiss to mention that most of the people laid off were high performers, women, and minorities. Seems like they play favorites in the good old boys club. Lay offs aside, ICs get very little support from their mid level managers. But mid level managers are being run into the ground my the executives. Books of business changed almost every quarter, and new strategies were rolled out without a plan almost monthly, before the previous ones even had a chance to get off the ground.

For a myriad of reasons, things started to turn sour. Perhaps it began with the CEO's tone-deaf response during a company-wide meeting, claiming, "I sleep well at night," in the face of economic questions. Or maybe the decline started with the ambitious goal to expand to 500 employees within a year. Or could it be the hiring of bad apples? How about when leadership invested in new strategies that seemed questionable at best. We'll never know the straw that broke the camel's back, but all I can tell you is that there was a palpable shift in the air. In hindsight, the signs of trouble might have been present all along, masked by a successful company riding high on a $100 million raise. The true cracks only became apparent when the economy shifted. When I think about it, it didn’t ever seem like management took feedback seriously. I mean I can’t tell you the number of times we would ask our managers for more transparency (as if it being our core value wasn’t enough). In our most recent company survey, the results were the lowest they’d ever been. (For context, in my early days, responses overwhelmingly leaned towards "I strongly agree" for statements like "I am proud to work for Gem" and "I would recommend Gem as a great place to work.") It always puzzled me why e-staff wouldn’t ask the simple question of “Why are you feeling this way?” Instead, assumptions were made, and blame was thrown around. No one ever wanted to take accountability. Something that’s funny and worth mentioning. If you see Gem on a "Best Places to Work '' list, take it with a grain of salt. HR was practically begging people to fill out the survey so we could reclaim the title. Being a part of and seeing the company transform so quickly into what it is now is quite sad. As echoed by others, it's especially disheartening that favoritism has become a defining characteristic of Gem.