Let’s start with the obvious: leadership says one thing and does another. “values” are talked about constantly by senior leadership founders, and Chief of Staff. Transparency is preached, yet decisions happen behind closed doors. Employee well being is emphasized, but workloads and expectations tell a different story. Favoritism runs rampant and the COS is just putting band aids on a bleeding wound.
There’s also a steady pattern of layoffs, which leadership tends to frame as “strategic adjustments,” but at this point it just feels like business as usual. It’s hard to take messaging about people first culture seriously when job security feels this fragile. Leadership also has a convenient habit of positioning the parent company as the villain behind unpopular decisions. In reality, a lot of the dysfunction feels homegrown. It’s an easy deflection that avoids accountability, and employees aren’t as fooled as leadership seems to think.
The performance review process is inconsistent at best and meaningless at worst. Expectations aren’t clearly defined, feedback varies wildly depending on who you report to, and outcomes don’t always align with actual performance. It’s hard to take career development seriously when the system evaluating you feels this arbitrary.
There’s a noticeable gap between how leadership perceives the company culture and how employees actually experience it. Feedback is often encouraged, but rarely acted on. When it is acknowledged, it tends to be reframed rather than addressed. It creates a cycle where people stop speaking up, not because they don’t care, but because they’ve learned it doesn’t lead anywhere. Engagement survey is a waste of time, even when they provide back that report card at the end of the year of their actionables.
