The lack of transparency around strategic direction, senior role appointments, and overall business decisions ripples through every layer of the business. Favouritism is rampant and not particularly subtle. While the business keeps a mild, yet fading appearance of internal openness, in reality, raising concerns - especially about leadership - is not only not appreciated, but punished.
Values and mission are the main draws when you first join the company, yet they’ve been hollowed out and replaced with corporate buzzwords that mean very little. The disregard for people development, wellbeing and DEI has grown increasingly obvious, and complying with the demise of people-centric values and practices while keeping an outward appearance of enthusiasm is no longer optional - it’s the key to survival.
Speed is fetishised in a way that does real and long-lasting damage. Reactive decisions get rebranded as bold ones. Competitor panic passes for agility. The result is that teams are permanently sprinting without knowing the destination, working at pace without a clear rationale, and absorbing a level of pressure that isn't sustainable. Burnout isn't a risk - it's a predictable and common outcome, and one the business seems uninterested in preventing.
Accountability is another casualty. When something doesn't work, responsibility dissolves - passed around until nobody owns it, and then quietly dropped in favour of the ‘’next big thing’’. There's no honest post-mortem culture, no structured learning, no meaningful reflection. Leadership seems to have developed a remarkable talent for looking directly at a problem and choosing not to see it.
Managers and their teams often seem to be operating with fundamentally different expectations of one another, and this breakdown repeats itself across the organisation. Through all the empty rethoric about pace and autonomy, staff experience something much closer to surveillance and micro-management than trust.
A business that positions data as its defining value makes its most consequential people decisions purely on the basis of executive preference. People management practices are anything but transparent, seemingly taking advantage of gaps in employment law to avoid formal layoffs and the subsequent obligations.
Ultimately, the company's greatest intolerance is for honesty. Speaking plainly, raising concerns, and offering a view that wasn't asked for results in becoming expendable, no matter how hard you work or how competent and committed you are.
