Pros
- Passionate, amazing coworkers who take the mission seriously and want to do good in the world - A product that you can be proud of - Moderately stocked kitchen - There are sometimes opportunities to move into other departments and develop different career skills. This has the caveat that you MUST play nice and ingratiate yourself to everybody above you because hard work alone will not get you there (playing office politics is common in many corporate jobs, but it's a little more surprising at a company that's centered around "doing good", so it seemed worth mentioning)
Kontras
Where to start? Reading through existing reviews, everything has already been covered, but it's worth reiterating the issues I saw with leadership to make it clear that these issues are the norm, not the exception. Leadership is the reason current and former employees caution against working here, almost anything else could be overlooked. There were many people who accepted lower pay because they cared more about working on a product that they loved, but at a certain point the toxic culture becomes unbearable. Leadership. This is mostly senior leadership, but extends to some of middle management as well. They spend a lot of time brainstorming ways to work more effectively, collaboratively, and efficiently, but it never really goes anywhere. They speak at length about how much they value employee feedback and ideas, but constructive feedback is ignored at best and taken as hostility at worst. Many of the most passionate employees ended up fired with no warning or reasoning given. One employee here or there wouldn't be suspicious (we never truly know how someone is performing at their job, and it's customary to not be given insight into it), but over my time there it was easily dozens of employees whose work and contributions were well beyond expectations, and the only common thread was that they often spoke about how employee conditions could be improved. Furthermore, those decisions often came from C-suite rather than their more direct leads, managers, or directors. If anyone voiced concern over these sudden departures (even if it was just to acknowledge the hit to morale or workload), certain management and senior leadership would treat that concern as a suspicious lack of trust. From previous corporate jobs, I was accustomed to a lack of transparency and a distrust from the top down, but it felt especially offensive and surprising in an environment that continually promises that your feedback and opinions are valued. Leadership would consistently make decisions that were not in the best interest of employees (return to office, scaling back of DEI initiatives and workshops, soft union busting). Return to office is cited in some of the more favorable reviews as a reason employees were disgruntled, and waved off as people not wanting to work in-office anymore, but that's not the full picture. During the pandemic, many employees were given explicit permission to move to different cities and states only to be told a year later that they had to move back or lose their jobs (despite their performance being great and other departments remaining fully remote at the time). They all ended up fired, which impacted both morale and workload for remaining employees. I truly believe Erine started this company because he believed in the mission. Unfortunately, his inability to trust his employees resulted in decisions that created the exact environment he was worried about-- a culture of distrust and anxiety, directed toward him and other C-suite decision-makers.