When I interviewed for my role, I was told that Tatcha is not your “typical” startup; I thought that only meant that there’d be no free food or unlimited vacations. However, what I didn’t realize is that being “not your typical startup” goes beyond no free food or unlimited vacations.
I have worked at both big companies and at other Silicon Valley startups, and I believe that Tatcha’s culture is more like the negative side of a big company’s culture, def not a startup culture. Yet, Tatcha’s (limited) resources are that of a startup.
• Facetime is Key:
Work from home is not allowed- even if you’re sick but still have a lot of
work to get done, even if you have doctor appointments, and even if you’d still get work done if you work from home. I understand that some people are not productive when they’re working from home, so this could be why working from home at Tatcha is not allowed. However, there are people who remain productive and still get things done when working from home, so this no-work-from-home policy comes across as the company having no trust in their employees, even the good employees.
Unless you’re in Customer Service, you have to work until AT LEAST 6pm, even if you’re done with your work or are at a stopping point with your work. Customer Service people are allowed to work until only 5pm because they come in around 8am, earlier than everyone else. Everyone else usually comes in around 9am.
Executives reward people who stay in the office until 9pm when the CEO is in the office, even if they kill time by shopping online or watching movies in their computer. As long as you look like you’re working until 9pm and the CEO sees it, you’ll get praises and honors.
• Double-Standard: Work from home is not allowed…UNLESS YOU’RE AN EXECUTIVE. This is a fact that there are executives who work from home even though the people who report to them are not allowed to. I know for a fact that even the CEO works from home from time to time.
• People at Tatcha play the blame game: People use meetings to blame and talk badly about other people who were NOT invited to the meetings (so basically other departments).
• High Office Politics & Lack of Teamwork: Rather than coming together and helping each other out to get a project done, most people at Tatcha seem to shove work onto other people who already over-loaded. As a result, those people who are team players and are trying to be helpful are the same people who get over-worked. Also, some of the people at Tatcha stabbed other people in the back and are two-faced in order to get ahead.
• No work/life balance: Working on the weekends become such a casual thing at Tatcha. I know working at startups can be hard work and sometimes extra hours are needed, but in most other startups, those extra hours are usually compensated by flex hours on other days in order to maintain the employees’ work/life balance. Not at Tatcha.
• Pressure from Executives: Pressure on unreasonable deadlines, heavy workload, etc. Some people who had had a history of anxiety and depression fell back into anxiety & depression while working at Tatcha due to all the drama and pressures. Some people who never had a history of anxiety and depression developed these issues while working at Tatcha.
• Low Employee Morale: All of the points I mentioned above (and maybe others that I have not mentioned) create a very high employee turnover at Tatcha, which then creates low employee morale. In the short time that I was there, about 13 people left Tatcha. Due to the low employee morale there’s so much negativity among the employees, and like wildfire, negativity spreads fast.
• No Transparency from Management: I’ve worked at startups where the CEO and her Management Team were transparent with the rest of the company regarding what’s going on with the company and where they’d like to take the company to next. I didn’t see this at Tatcha. Weekly All-Hands meetings become a meeting that felt like it’s all about competition among the Sales & Marketing (i.e. who made the most sales this week), rather than a meeting where every group shares what they’re working on and/or where the Leadership Team is working on and where they would want to take the Company to next.
• You get only 6 Federal Holidays where most companies give you at least 7 or 8
