The business acumen of a lemonade stand - Anonymous employee Caliva Employee Review

In a few words, CEO is terrible and should be fired. They continually make significant stumbles that have had a large negative impact on the company. It is impossible to find a strategic move they have made that actually became a win for the company. Surprisingly the board hasn’t removed them, which points to the board being incompetent or ignorant (neither of which is comforting). The CEO is incapable of fulfilling the role in any meaningful fashion, and while this isn’t necessarily the worst thing or unheard of - they are as arrogant as they are incapable, which is a dangerous combination. Any good leader will surround themselves with experts - knowing their role as a leader is to support, challenge, and ultimately help drive the team toward success. At Caliva, the role of leadership is to question, subvert, instill fear and dictate. This is accomplished by attracting the absolute cheapest resources possible, which leads to a terrible talent vacuum at the company. The CEO is aware enough to know they are incapable of being successful, arrogant enough to think they can pull it off and surrounds themselves with lackluster talent that doesn’t know any better. The other reviews citing nepotism, racism, sexism and a complete lack of direction are all true. The employees are absolutely not top of mind - case in point (and this is all public so nothing secretive here) - There was a massive layoff in March. The news of the layoff was given to the press to publish BEFORE notifying impacted employees. Everyone showed up to work wondering if this was their last day. For those that made it through - there was no town hall, no all hands, no email, no slack - not even a consistent message passed down to management. You had to ask around and hope the information you were given was accurate. The end result is you end up with a company full of employees that mean well, but really have no idea what they are doing. Due to the lack of skill and experience, they assume this is the “startup life” or “cannabis industry”, unfortunately for them, it is simply due to incapable leadership. They are asked to do things they have no business attempting, but try and fail anyway - it is highly discouraged and viewed as a weakness to ask for help or to admit you don’t know. Instead you are expected to have every answer to every question and if you don’t know, you can simply make something up - and it really doesn’t matter because no one else knows the right answer anyway. You will NEVER encounter anyone at the company that impresses you, or feels like a leader. If you are one of the very very few that slip through the vetting process and actually have experience in the role you are fulfilling, get ready for a ride. There are really two outcomes - you realize how incompetent everyone is, and you try to bring the teams up by suggesting changes. You will soon realize this is futile, because that would require the teams to admit they don’t know, and that simply won’t happen. If you push on it and start to debate approaches with leadership, you will find yourself on the unemployment line very quickly. They don’t want anyone unveiling the core issue of the company - pure incompetence. The other option is you realize the company has such core foundational issues there is really nothing you can do to help - and you eventually move on - which will be the best career move you can make while at Caliva. My suggestion is to not learn the painful lessons so many before have - Caliva is no different than any other cannabis company - absolutely clueless and hiding behind being a “cannabis” company - which doesn’t prevent it from just flat out being a terrible company. Save your energy to grow and learn elsewhere - somewhere that respects who you are and celebrates your growth and wins. Caliva tries to be all things to all people, but in the end is just sub-par with everything - and the people certainly aren’t happy - so then are the plants?