In over their head, deceptive leadership, employees are disappearing all the time
Pros
- Extravagant new office in SOMA - Free meals - Free beer and huge parties - Really good investors - Still a few really good engineers - Opportunity to help people raise money to improve their lives and their communities
Cons
At first, Tilt seemed like it was going to be a great place to work. The investment team is top notch and we have a beautiful office in SOMA. The CEO talks a big game and made it sound like I was joining the next Amazon and for a little while there I actually believed him. But then I started working there... - Team members are disappearing all the time: We aren't told where they go. It's scary and weird....and SCARY! When employees put in their two weeks they are told not come into the office and to finish out their employment from home. Employees who quit are also discouraged from sending a farewell email to the company. This seems to because it allows management to spin the situation and make it look like another lay off. These are the type of deceptive tactics that happen regularly at this bizarre company. The only info we are given when people disappear is that the company outgrew them. Perhaps, but it seems like we're losing a lot of the best people. - Management by fear / insane deadlines: Engineering estimates are ignored. It's extremely frustrating to continually propose realistic estimates only to have those estimates replaced by insane deadlines and constant pressure to hit them. We are always in a fire drill and the team is burning out. We've lost A LOT of good engineers because of this. At one point one management noticed that people were leaving before 6pm and so an all-hands meeting was called to tell us that Tilt is not a company you to join if you are looking for work-life balance. To be fair, they apologized for lashing out at the team but shortly after dinners were moved back by an hour as a thinly veiled attempt to get the team to stay even later. - The "growth" is all hype: behind the lavish office and our internal propaganda machine, Tilt is a struggling crowd funding site that is still looking for its identity (search for "top crowd funding sites" and see how often Tilt comes up). We changed our name and dropped the "crowd" but we still can't figure out a away to differentiate ourselves from all the other products with the same features. Apparently, they expect us to believe helping frats raise money for parties is going to evolve into a billion dollar company. - No innovation: product direction changes all the time as the CEO has a new schizophrenic product revelation almost every week. We are left in perpetual panic mode as we try to implement his latest epiphany. Recently, we've devolved into focusing most of our energy on copycatting our competitors. Every month there's a different app that we need to be like. Employees who have their own product ideas are run out of the company. Challenging leadership is viewed as a threat. - Bizarrely controlling of information: For example, we aren't allowed to endorse other Tilt employees on LinkedIn. We've been told by leadership that this is a fireable offense. It's unclear why this rule exists, but it seems like it's part of a larger effort by management to control their image externally. In general, the culture is very tight lipped. We rarely know what's really on. Management cites the mantra "loose lips sink ships" and stated on several occasions that there will come a time when they need to fire someone for leaking information, and while this will sadden them, they will have no choice. Perhaps this is true, but these types of threats are only hurting morale and scaring people away.
