Pros
Nice office Free food Free lunch Healthcare paid Your typical startup benefits, essentially
Kontras
The most egregious place to start would be with their rampant racism problem. In an office of over 100, they only have two black employees - both those employees started end of 2019, 4+ years and 100+ employees after the company opened a NYC office. The only minorities they hire are those of Asian descent or light skinned Latinos. Despite this, they love to blast gangsta rap in the office, so that employees are subject to hearing the n-word constantly all day, as well as misogynistic and overall work inappropriate music. This problem was brought up to HR several times, yet HR didn’t intervene. The racism doesn’t end there though! To show how casual and rampant it is, an anecdote: every Friday, they make new employees tell a fun fact/interesting story about themselves. One employee got up and, in front of the whole company including the leadership team, told her story that hinged on the punchline of black men being scary - and she made sure to repeat it to drive the point home. Unsurprisingly, many people in the office chuckled and laughed at her story and, as soon as she finished, the CEO went up and gave a speech about how the company is a zero tolerance company — tone deaf much? HR brushed off the incident and defended her and said it was just her being “ignorant” and she meant no harm. If you aren’t Israeli or Jewish, you also are not going to get ahead in this company. With the exception of one person, every single person in an executive leadership position in the NYC office is either Jewish or Israeli — so of 9 exec positions in the office, 8 are Jewish or Israeli. Of all these positions, four of them were hired in NYC, they didn’t move over from the Tel Aviv office. I’m sure they were the most qualified for the job though! Don’t know Hebrew? Well get used to it being spoken around you ALL THE TIME. Despite the fact that they have been previously told that speaking Hebrew is not allowed, the Israeli workers constantly speak in Hebrew. It’s uncomfortable and creates an us vs. them feeling, but that English-only rule was respected for maybe a week. They also love to bait and switch you — hire you for one job and then make you do another full time job (in addition to the one you were hired for) on top of it, and refuse to compensate you for it or to remove it from your plate, no matter how many times you ask (or cry). When I finally stood up for myself after a year and a half of being bullied by them and said I wasn’t going to do it anymore, I was told by my manager that I was unprofessional and not representing her expectations. She was consistently unprofessional in her treatment of me and she didn’t meet my expectations of what a manager should be, so I guess we were both disappointed! As for the culture? Well, entitled is the perfect way to describe it. Free lunch twice a week isn’t enough — people will ask for money to buy their own lunch if they don’t like what’s being served (and again - being served for free). A flight is out of budget? They will ignore you and refuse to answer you for days to try to force you into booking their preferred flight. Or, even better, they will bully and harass you until you break down and give them what they want. Also — rules don’t apply to everyone. For instance — you’re told work from home is not allowed and no one is allowed to do it, yet it seems like everyone does, the HR team in particular. Cute how the policy creators and enforcers get to disregard the rules. After I asked about being able to work from home, I was told it was absolutely not allowed — yet a month later, they allowed someone to move to LATAM and work remotely (I asked why and she said she just always wanted to live there), and also hired an employee who lives in another state. Not only does he get to work from home, but they pay for two weeks in a hotel for him every month to come and work from this office. Interesting, isn’t it? We also are not allowed to have monitors, so everyone is hunched over laptops all day in chairs with minimal back support. Enjoy your back problems! I could go on, but I think I painted a pretty good picture so far...