Toxic workplace - avoid at all cost! - Operations PhantomBuster Employee Review

An environment of secrecy and opacity fostered by the top management called "executive committee" There's no visibility on how most company-wide decisions are taken or why. This executive committee meets regularly but nobody knows what is being discussed. We were initially told that they'd be sharing notes of these meetings but they never actually delivered on this promise. Additionally, middle-management is rarely consulted nor informed about important changes and it's not rare that they learn about them at the same time or after the rest of the organization. Needless to say, this undermines middle-management's efficiency in running their teams. If you consider a middle-management position, you will likely suffer from this.  - Toxic and brutal management methods stemming from a top executive One of the members of this committee - who was hired in spring 2022 - behaves like a bully and lacks basic respect, empathy and professionalism when dealing with employees: humiliation of employees publicly in front of their teammates, frequent use of inappropriate language, slandering of colleagues during 1:1s, disclosing of confidential employee information (e.g. salary), pit members of the same team against one another by spreading rumors ("I heard that") which are impossible to verify or debunk and which create distrust amongst teams. Never before had I worked with someone that toxic. I left shortly after he was appointed as my manager. - An environment where empathy and respect is missing. Employees are treated as cogs in a machine and empathy is definitely not on the menu. Several employees have been dismissed or pushed to leave under shady circumstances. Worst, employee departures are not communicated and we learn it after they had actually occurred. On top of not being able to say goodbye to colleagues, we're left wondering what happened which creates a sentiment of fear. Because of these shady management practices, there is a general distrust between employees and the executive committee. Funnily enough, one of the "values" of the company is well-being, don't get fooled as it's just a gimmick to make the company look like a good environment. - No culture of feedback. If you wish to be consulted or have a say in important decisions affecting the entire company, this is definitely not the place for that. - Lack of visibility over the company's vision and long-term goals. We have these bi-annual kick-off meetings to be told about the new initiatives with very little context or consultation beforehand. This is not followed up and we quickly loose sight of said initiatives or objectives. Furthermore, goals and strategy keep changing every other 6 months which goes on to show that it's not really thought through. Most companies where I worked before regularly update their employees on the progress made and founders inspire employees by frequently sharing their vision. This doesn't happen at PhantomBuster and I would add that, from my standpoint, the issue is directly related to the inexperience of its founders (especially the CEO who's responsible for most of what I described before, the CTO seems to not weigh in on these issues), both of whom have never worked at a company before. This makes them look way out of their league, not knowing how to take the company to its next stage. I'm not the only one to think this since a company-wide pulse check survey showed that the lack of leadership was the #1 concern for most employees. For this reason, it's hard to project oneself into the general strategy and you wind up being disengaged towards it.