Optimizely was acquired by Episerver in 2020, and within months everyone that made Optimizely what it was, left. The leadership team broke their new toy as soon as they got it.
Perhaps the weakest leadership team I've ever seen at a company this size. They love to articulate their market vision, but don't know how to achieve it, let alone run a business.
The company has no regard for talent, only headcount and budgets - it's a "mini-SAP".
The majority of the c-suite lacks credibility and operates by:
- Blaming others and outside forces for adversity that is self-inflicted, rather than examining what is happening within their walls
- Using intimidation and aggression in private settings to bully or guilt employees for being unhappy
- Using the company as a vanity project for self-promotion and inflating egos
- Responding to turmoil and change by repeating marketing statements, rather than listening to employees.
- Pretending marketing is a product strategy
There was speculation they were actually looking to drive attrition, rather than terminate people. Meanwhile, there are no talent-management practices such as levels and reviews. They pay below industry rates, lowball on promotions, and make up for it by giving people meaningless titles. There are lots of "Directors" with one or no direct reports. Finance drives all company decisions.
The technology is outdated, and not pointed in the direction the market is heading. Even Microsoft is abandoning the "Microsoft Stack" in favor of open source. There's zero, I mean zero, innovation.
All-in-all, this place suffers from the legacy of Ektron/Episerver, people who have worked there as their only job for too long. They are resistant to change and outside ideas because it threatens their position and shines a light on all the dusty, worn aspects of the business that have been neglected and really should have been changed years ago.
