Toxic - Designer Bark Employee Review

It pains me to give Bark such a low rating. When I joined the company, I couldn't believe how I lucky I was to work there. My first year on the team was great – my colleagues were brilliant, the work was fun, and the culture felt relatively good. Eventually, the CEO position changed hands and the company began to nosedive. There was a big push to get a big, fancy office in a big, fancy part of town. Probably to make the company seem more "legit" for the investors and suits. I'm convinced that all the money they sank into that new office, which was underutilized because most people chose to wfh, contributed to all the financial difficulties that caused the first round of layoffs – over 100 people in February, and then again in July – over 100 additional folks. There were hints that the company was desperate to save money – like the office space being subleased to two other companies to make extra cash. While paying for a new fancy office, I also heard that the company was still on the hook for rent on the old office location. There are several other real estate discrepancies that seem costly and inefficient. Instead of spending money wisely, the company chose to be frivolous and just chop about 200 people in the span of months. Not to mention, the CEO recently purchased a second, multi million dollar home. As other reviews have mentioned, there is glaring favoritism in the company. If you're nice and cozy with the c-suite, you get moved up and are more likely to survive layoffs. The further away you are from the CEO, the more likely it is that you'll be on the list for the next round of layoffs. The C-suite also has a fixation on all the new Ai technology that's emerging. For some reason, instead of focusing on making high quality products and marketing them, people at the top decided that Bark is now a tech company and started using Ai to create unhinged images to put its website.