This is not a mission driven company. Management simply uses that mantra to pay below-market for labor (which they do aggressively). I made barely a living wage for most of my time working here, and for a period lived out of my car. Worse than that, they took every opportunity to short my compensation, including failing to pay even close to my full bonus multiple years in a row (this is financial services so bonuses are part of the expected deal to make things workable) and withdrawing directly from my bank account after they pushed me out.
I left this place financially broke, burnt out, and disenchanted with humanity's chances of actually doing the good work that needs doing. Most of the people I met and professionally respected here have either left or consider themselves stuck there because of their financial or professional development situation. I didn't meet many who were here because they thought they could make the largest impact by doing it. Sure, it's a job in the solar industry. Mission complete. Now I can go to happy hour and wait it out until people can call me "experienced." Otherwise it's the standard D.C. treadmill.
There is no professional development function. To reply to this quote from another review: "People need to make their own opportunities. Nobody can plan your career for you." This is not a place where you can make your own opportunities and I did not meet anyone there who successfully "made their own opportunity." If you are in a good position to pick up an initiative that has already been thought up or proven by the executive team and really dig into it, you might get support. But there is no infrastructure for proposing ideas or aligning employee career paths with the organization's goals, and therefore trying to make your own opportunity just makes you a squeaky wheel likely to get negative attention. The beginning of the end was when I scheduled a meeting to discuss an "opportunity" with the CFO at the time and he told me that my job didn't involve thinking.
The people who tried to convince me that self-directed professional development at Sol was possible ended up being the ones to throw me under the bus via a defamatory review during the coordinated effort to push me out the door. My best guess is that they perceived that my ideas overlapped with theirs in a way that made them feel threatened about their "opportunity", though as far as I saw we were never actually conflicted. This insecurity runs throughout the organization and is just as good a replacement for malice as anything. These people lasted less than a year at the company before also leaving (well into the reign of additional HR resources that were added more recently than I can attest to).
The best case scenario for "making your own opportunity" here is that you would essentially do all of the work required to start a company on your own time and budget and then be paid a nice salary by Sol who obviously owns the end result and gets the upside. Oh, and it will take 2x as long, stress you out 10x as much, and be 1/4 as profitable as doing it on your own. People who are truly able to make their own opportunities are called "entrepreneurs" and they don't work here. The idea that you might have freedom one day is a constant-distance carrot that management deploys strategically to get you to do what they want. The least ambitious people on average are treated the best here.
Though I enjoyed getting to know them as officemates and sometimes on projects, I did not get to work for any of the "genuinely driven, motivated, and passionate" people I mentioned above. Others spent most of their time reading Business Insider and negotiating their own compensation and remote work plan based on my performance while ignoring our scheduled meetings and email, and telling me to perform tasks so far outside the mission of the company and my job description that I literally thought they were joking (they was not). There was no avenue of recourse for this despite my clear and direct statements to multiple people with control over the situation, and eventually the constant distraction and interruption of these irrelevant "urgent" tasks overwhelmed my actual job duties. At best, the company lied about my job responsibilities and compensation to get me to transition from consulting to employment status. To be 100% clear, this is the reason I didn't fight to stay when I was being pushed out: the role I would have been fighting for had been destroyed by the very people who should have been the greatest champions of it. I accepted the loss because it was clear the company wasn't going to listen to my side.
I did not meet anyone in the C-suite who had any concept of how to scale a business or run a one at scale. Basically, their strategy for growth is to run really fast in a circle and hope someone gives you a gold star or you pass out and achieve some level of euphoria from that before starting again (bonus points for hitting one's head against a wall somehow in the process). The amount of technical debt they manage to accrue via this method is really incredible and it's burned out many of their former employees. Subsequently, they have not really grown at all, despite a lot of talk about doing so and having given up massive amounts of equity for chances to scale which they failed to execute on.
The incompetence with which my business segment was run was laughable. If you want to actually learn or do anything impactful there you'll be on your own and probably undermined by poor managerial abilities as well. And as I am acutely aware, even if you surmount all of these obstacles to perform well you will not be compensated appropriately.
I was repeatedly asked to diligence deals that could only be executed by violating federal or state laws. These types of deals were recommended to our "investment committee" (CEO+CFO co-founders at the time) where they were taken seriously and at least once executed on at the direct expense of our clients. If you must work here, avoid the trading desk. I would not be surprised if it is shut down by the authorities or management in the near future...or if it blows up due to being poorly run. My understanding is that they have faced at least one margin call during the pandemic which prevented previously agreed-upon bonuses from being paid.
For the record here is how my departure went down:
- Try to make the "opportunity" path work, articulating a plan of action that management signs off on at the beginning of the year to do my job more efficiently so as to enable scaling without excessive overhead. I also discuss with HR (a C-level executive wearing multiple hats) in advance and receive approval to work on a set of projects outside of my current team's purview.
- I execute the plan as planned for the first few months of the year.
- This plan is ignored and inappropriate duties are added to my plate by lying about their priority from the C-suite (I deflected, communicated clearly that this was not okay, yet it did not cease) (This is when I should have left).
- I report the specifics of the behavior to HR, who refer me to the CFO (one rung above me as far as I can tell from the non-existent org chart)
- CFO and I decide on a transition which would involve me consulting while we figure out the opportunity proactively based on what I've done so far and keep it quiet since the drama aspect of multiple others' behavior is not ideal for anyone (and, per Hanlon's razor, may not be malicious). I submit my notice on his word that we will figure it out, and keep things quiet as agreed.
- Secretly, there has been a search for a replacement the entire time, and one is hired at this point.
- The CEO publicly announces to everyone that I've decided to leave (an outright lie)
- I am asked to fill out an exit interview questionnaire
- Sol drags their feet on consulting arrangement while I do work on a trust basis ("we are busy with this other deal").
- I get no bonus for the year, the reason is later stated as multiple different things including reviews I haven't seen yet (turns out to be a bogus frame-up), "other people need that money more than you" (what?), "ultimately bonuses are discretionary" (typical b.s.)
- Stop-gap consulting agreement is signed (at this point I just want to be made partially whole and get out before truly getting hurt), I am paid for the time spent in transition. Company is supposed to scope out next steps during this time.
- Company does not propose any new projects, or for my prior work to continue.
- 2 more replacements are hired over the course of the next months.
