Pros
Mid and low-level employees are extraordinary: hard-working, dedicated and committed to the company. It´s a great place to learn on the fly if you have little working experience: since most senior employees take the abuse less than a year, you’ll be given responsibilities way above your experience and pay grade (although, you will not get more money when taking on more tasks).
Cons
Where to start? To say this place is toxic is an understatement. People stand it for less than a year; some estimate between 50% and 80% of employees churn every 12 months. Startups are demanding, but that is a very high number. I will touch on specific topics that will help readers make an educated decision on whether they should join Neo or not. Workplace culture Neo is a place where you’ll be constantly harassed and abused by leadership; the biggest culprit is the COO, a textbook narcissistic who is the actual individual calling all the shots. He would continually remind you how bad you are at your job, how replaceable you are and how easily he could do what you do if only he had the time. And he’s not shy about it; he can say it in a room full of people, or casually while walking together between meetings. If he ever gave one-on-one feedback, he would probably mention it there, too. He even whispers, “Nobody cares what you’re saying” and “You’re wasting everybody’s time” to employees he dislikes when he’s trying to break them down during meetings. But don’t be fooled; this is not a one-man-toxic-show; this behaviour can only flourish when the rest of the leadership team looks the other way. The CEO (the figurehead and main spokesperson), and the people in charge of podcasting and development are guilty by omission. They let him get away with this behaviour, each one for their own selfish reasons: the CEO is physically afraid of the COO, to the point where he cannot look the COO in the eye when he’s confronting him; the other people in leadership are just happy to be there, they understand their limitations, and know they wouldn’t be anywhere as successful as they are now without the COO. Leadership As I mentioned before, the COO is the real leader of the company. He makes the decisions, often without anybody else’s input. This affects employee morale since you can spend hours researching and analyzing information only to be shot down immediately without any explanation because he has opposite preconceived views. Whatever you do, never try to confront him and call him out on his poorly planned ideas; you will lose your job. It has happened to many of us. He shuts down when faced with data that doesn’t align with his ideas. I remember one meeting that wasn’t going his way where he started writing the salaries of everyone present to show how much that meeting was costing Neo. The rest of the founders are not better than him; they would rather throw you under the bus than antagonize the COO; as I mentioned, they are either too scared or don’t care about you. Work-life balance It depends on your team and how engaged you are, but since your manager is probably pushed by his own manager to work longer days and weekends, you’ll probably be overworked, too. I’ve heard about individuals who could establish clear limits with their bosses, but they were the exception. You will probably be asked to work on off days, nights or weekends. To give the founders some credit, they also work long hours; the difference is that if Neo ever cashes its shares, they might become billionaires, and you might be able to put the down payment on a car. That is a big difference. So, no, there is little to no work-life balance. Growth inside the company Much of the employee frustration is derived from the lack of any improvement in their personal situation: people hired two or three years ago have the same salary as the day they were hired, and even in the rare instances when someone is promoted, they keep the same compensation. Talking about promotions, they are few and far between. I know of two people who were promoted from within, while keeping the same salary. In most cases, Neo tries to hire externally, often someone with far less experience. For example, around five people from the product team quit overnight when they were demoted without any official performance review or explanation. As for demotions, most of the time, Neo doesn’t even tell employees they’re demoted; they sit them further away from their manager and hand them less meaningful assignments in the hope they resign on their own. Long-term company vision I won’t share any confidential information, but their strategy is to grow through partnerships, and to this day, there is not a single partnership working out for them: in some cases, the customers from the partnership rarely use the co-branded card, or the average spend is way below spend in the average card. In other the products reached 1/1000 (that is one thousand) penetration of its original target. In a third instance, Neo launched a product that wasn’t ready to be launched because of poor technological planning, so they had to relaunch it months later. In the most ambitious partnership, the results were so poor that the partner fired the team involved with the Neo partnership. So don’t be fooled about their share compensation. It’s a scam to get you to take less cash. They show tables where your money will be worth 40x after four years to convince you to take less cash. They don’t even have the courtesy of disclosing that you will have to pay taxes the moment you decide to exercise your shares, and they can be easily diluted (there are rumours where the Founders’ shares don’t dilute, but I have no proof). To summarize, due to its lack of tangible results, Neo is neither a safe nor a high-potential investment, making it too risky to spend the little money you have because, as a Neo Employee, you were primarily paid in shares and free coffee. Short recap: unless you have no other option, don’t work in Neo