Good while you’re there but you’ll probably be laid off - Anonymous employee Codeword Employee Review

Great culture. Everyone I have worked with has been super nice, and fun to talk with. There are no negative vibes. The leadership is really good at being transparent, I feel like i know how the decisions are being made and how they will effect me. The work is always interesting and I feel like I'm able to do interesting and unique work.

There have been some layoffs that have rattled the company.

The people on the ground level are smart, capable, and generally supportive of each other as well as the clients, probably because they’ve learned not to rely on leadership. There are moments where the work feels meaningful, and if you’re self driven, you can carve out some interesting projects despite the chaos. Also, if you enjoy interpreting vague directives as a daily mental exercise, you’ll never be bored.

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.