piazza Reviews

The founder/CEO. Control freak to the core. She’s very boastful of her accomplishments but seems to lack self awareness, humility, grace, confidence, patience, trust and overall a soul. Maybe narcissistic? Refuses to let highly qualified people do the jobs they were hired to do. She’s clearly threatened by other intelligent and confident women. Lacks the ability to understand or attempt to understand the challenges organizations face with the current and growing skills gap. If she allowed those qualified to focus on growing the revenue generating side of the business, there is huge market share to gain. Hoping the investors demand she take a seat on the university side and stay parked there. I’d love to see this concept flourish. But with her in ‘charge’ it most likely will remain a constant difficult sale.

I should have listened to the Glassdoor reviews before I accepted the job. It takes certain qualities for a person to be able to work with the CEO. Those qualities include low self-esteem, a desire to be a sycophant to a narcissist, and a willingness to give up every aspect of your personal life. The other reviews do not exaggerate when they describe the CEO. There is no question that she is a brilliant person. However, she lacks basic empathy for her employees and she believes that trust has to be earned, which means you begin your position with absolutely no trust bestowed on you by the CEO. I was initially excited to join this company, having used it extensively in college. However the warning signs began on day one. During lunch, I asked a coworker what their hobbies were, to which they replied "I've not had time for hobbies since I started working here." Still, I convinced myself that I had made the right decision by choosing this job over others, and managed to pull through for another few months. I have lost count of the volume of important life events I missed because of the grueling hours. To put it into perspective, I worked through every weekend while I was employed at this company and was required to be working from 6-7am to 11pm-12am. Some of the positive reviews might lead you to believe that these long hours are standard for all start-ups, but it is absolutely not. Normal start-up work hours extend to a maximum of 12 hours in a day, not 18 hours. Incidentally, the reason behind the required long hours is due to the CEO's staunch belief that her employees are inherently lazy, unwilling to contribute to her company, and are ultimately slacking off. In her mind, she is the only person who cares about the progress of her company and by default, everyone else is not performing to the best of their ability. She often calls her employees at 5:30am and aggressively tells them how they are failing at their job, without even so much as a "hello" or "good morning." After several months of being constantly devalued and yelled at like a child, I decided to leave the company. The CEO has been the biggest disappointment of my professional life. She is not worthy of the trust her employees place in her as a leader. Please save yourself the trauma and stay away from this company.