The culture of a company, especially a SaaS trying to scale up such as Optimy, comes from top-down. When you have a CEO who is only concerned with “revenue, revenue revenue”, micromanaging every single employee down to the interns, and putting employees down constantly, it will only be a matter of time before you are going to catch yourself in the most toxic of environments.
The CEO will pry into your personal life and use things against you in a way that will leave you shocked and appalled. He will question you to the point where you will have no confidence left to do your job properly. In my time at Optimy, I saw him mistreat the best of the best employees in the same manner to the point where either they quit or were burnt out. His behavior is excused time and time again and employees are left with a sense of hopelessness on a daily basis. No matter how many times he says he trusts you and your decisions, he will find a way to block you or stop you from exploring new avenues--and he is involved in every little decision.
Because of all of this, the actual environment and atmosphere within the office is extremely negative and everyone is on edge. There are some amazing employees there with great ideas and strong work ethic but because they aren't trusted or given room to grow, they all turn to negativity--perpetuating the awful environment.
Having an office building that allows you to do your work properly, tech equipment, a coffee machine, a lounge area, etc are seen as privileges and not necessities and you will be reminded of this every now and then via slack by the CEO or the CFO. Sometimes it felt as though we were in primary school by the way we were reprimanded and spoken to.
In short--all of these things will change your motivation, it will either turn you into a negative person (and this will inevitably be used against you), or it will make you realize you wasted your time working at a company that did not value your skills at all. You will come away from it having learned very little and exhausted from always having to do your job with all the pushback. The huge turnover only goes to show when you don't value employees, they leave.
