1) Toxic leadership culture
-Leadership uses military terminology like "wartime CEO," "battle," and "war room" and “blitz” constantly, creating unnecessary stress and artificial urgency. This is MarTech not World War II.
- Micromanagement is disguised as "high performance culture." Daily check-ins are used to monitor and control rather than support employees.
2) Public humiliation as management style.
-Engineering leadership openly criticizes and berates employees in group settings. Leaders demand instant recall of details from months or years prior, then publicly humiliate you when you can't deliver on the spot.
-Feedback is weaponized rather than constructive.
3) "Flexible PTO" that isn't actually flexible, or encourage.
- Despite offering flexible “take as you need” PTO, employees are criticized for taking time off - even during family medical emergencies. PTO is labeled as "excessive" or "bordering on too much" to create guilt and discourage people from using the benefit they were promised. Classic bait-and-switch.
4) Removed employee benefits and holidays
- Company removed recognized holidays like Juneteenth and wellness days, sending a clear message about priorities and values. When leadership takes away benefits, they're telling you exactly how much they value you.
5)Actively hostile to diversity efforts
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Engineering leadership has openly stated they "don't care about EEOC" or EEOC compliance data.
- There is a serious lack of diversity at the leadership level with no meaningful efforts to change this. Creates an unwelcoming environment for underrepresented employees.
6) Product direction chaos
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Strategy and product direction change constantly with no clear long-term vision.
- Individual contributors are left confused about what they're actually building and selling.
-Customer-facing messaging doesn't align with internal roadmap, creating inefficiency and whiplash across teams.
7) False promises about career growth
-The EPD organization actively lies about career advancement opportunities during recruiting and onboarding. Once hired, there are no actual growth paths available. Employees are kept in the same roles indefinitely despite being repeatedly told there's "room to grow." This is intentional deception to attract talent.
8) Compensation favoritism and inequity
-Compensation increases and equity refreshes are reserved for select "favorite" employees, particularly on the EPD side. There is no transparent compensation philosophy or performance review criteria. High performers are routinely passed over while favorites receive raises. Even within the same organization (Talent), some roles receive performance bonus structures while others doing comparable work do not - with zero explanation for the disparity.
8) Ineffective HR / Retaliation after reporting issues
-Hightouch scaled for almost 18 months without HR. There was even a period of time where there was no i9 verifications being done on employees due to lack of trained HR resources.
- HR is unable or unwilling to address concerns about leadership behavior. Employees who report problems to HR face escalation and retaliation rather than support. Creates an environment where speaking up makes things worse, not better.
9) Layoff that has been written off of history
Entire teams were laid off in 2022, with remaining employees expected to absorb the workload without additional support or compensation. New hires frequently leave within months once they experience the culture firsthand.
10) Complete lack of enterprise security
-Despite being a data company handling customer information, there is shockingly poor security infrastructure. No meaningful monitoring, inadequate access controls, and minimal security protocols on systems. For a company in this space, the lack of basic enterprise security practices is alarming and puts both the company and customers at serious risk
