Extremely toxic environment; poor leadership - Project Manager Scribe Media Employee Review

First, I urge you to take many of the 5-star/positive reviews here with a grain of salt. The HR (“People”) Department requests that all new-hires leave a Glassdoor review shortly after their initial onboarding. This means that many, if not all, of the “1 year or less” reviews were written by employees who are barely a week or two out of their “rah rah, go team!” onboarding sessions. I should know; I wrote one of the 5-star reviews here, hyped up on the vision promised me during my onboarding. Second, I want to note that this review does not come from a place of bitterness. I parted with Scribe on my own terms, and during my time there, I was in one of the cushier positions that tended to be insulated from the drama (and there is drama galore). My review of Scribe is broken up into two sections: the Structure and the Culture. The Structure: Despite claims of democratic decision-making and whole-team accountability, Scribe is incredibly autocratic. Within the “Experience” department, there is one member of the executive team who has absolute veto power, and who avoids delegating important tasks like the plague. This is an issue because this exec does not understand many (most) of the roles she is making decisions about, and tends to “shoot from the hip” when implementing new processes, without consulting the employees who will actually be working within the processes. This has led to a deep demoralization and feeling of disenfranchisement among some of the hardest-working members of the company. I have sat in on many round robin meetings, where employees across departments have strategized how to approach this exec member with suggestions of requests, only to be flatly refused before being heard. There’s no stability whatsoever, in either the structure/hierarchy of employees, or the processes. Scribe’s approach to fixing issues is to burn down the entire structure rather than take the time to problem-solve. Because of this, team members are constantly having to learn new systems when the old systems show any sign of weakness (regardless of the fact that many team members are willing to brainstorm and work together to find solutions within the old system). Unfortunately, the exec team member who calls all of the shots prefers to jump from one thing to another the moment something doesn’t go as planned. Most of the Project Managers and Author Success Managers are exhausted from having to scrap their knowledge and start from ground zero any time this exec changes her mind. In addition to the lack of process structure, the leadership structure is constantly shifting. Departments are dissolved and rebuilt on a regular basis; the longest we’ve been able to maintain a single team structure since I began working at Scribe is 6 months. Titles and roles are constantly changing, with some Scribe crew members being forced into roles they never signed on to do (as the only other option would be losing their job entirely). Nobody at the company feels fully “safe” in knowing that their role won’t be dissolved and rebuilt on a whim. The workload is incredibly uneven at Scribe. The Author Success Managers and Project Managers, who are paid a fraction of what bigger companies offer, are the workhorses of the company. They often work 70-75 hours a week, as they are virtually “on call” whenever authors need something. On top of this, their capacities are untenable, with some Project Managers working on 80 authors at a time. And yet, these positions are the least-promoted and some of the lowest-paid. However, since Scribe is willing to employ new Project Managers with zero project management experience, these green Project Managers are willing to accept this treatment (they don’t yet have enough experience to apply to PM positions outside of Scribe). It’s not rare for a 2-year veteran (because turnover is so high, 2 years qualifies as veteran status), to only see a raise of around $5000 over the course of those 2 years. The executive team is incredibly insulated from the general population of employees. Spend 5 minutes in the “bullpen” of the office, and it’s easy to see that there is a severe lack of morale among Project Managers, Author Success Managers, and Department Managers. In fact, every person I worked with on a daily basis is in the middle of searching for a new job. However, the executive team continues to believe that Scribe is truly a great place to work (maybe because they keep winning “Great Workplace” awards for magazines). The disconnect is troubling, as it speaks to the fact that leadership isn’t hearing the complaints that ground-level employees are passing along to their direct supports. The Culture: The values in The Culture Bible are constantly weaponized against employees as a way of suppressing opposition. When crew members approach their Direct Supports with justifiable complaints, or constructive critiques, they are often met with responses such as, “It doesn’t seem like you are approaching this from the value or optimism” or “If you were truly thinking about your work from the frame of abundance, a raise wouldn’t be so important to you.” One of the staples of Scribe leadership is telling employees that they are working from a “victim mindset”--this phrase is used to shut down any real discussion and instead blame the upset party for self-victimization. Scribe is a hotbed of crony-ism and nepotism. In fact, JeVon has said at multiple SotC meetings that he “loves nepotism.” Because of this, very important positions are left in the hands of folks who are incapable of performing their duties. Promotions and raises are also extremely scarce among the general crew population (and crew members are forced to haggle over the course of months for a $3k a year raise) while a select group of the “inner circle” are promoted constantly. On one memorable occasion, the CEO announced 20k raises for a handful of the inner sanctum, then immediately (in the same speech) announced that we were entering a hiring freeze and that no crew members who be receiving raises or promotions for the foreseeable future. Scribe does not have a traditional HR department. Because of this, there are absolutely no avenues for crew members who are at odds with their Direct Supports. When interpersonal issues arise, there exist no trained mediators or personnel to repair the damaged relationships. Instead, crew members are forced to navigate extremely tricky professional/personal situations on their own, which has often led to even more conflict. In one instance I witnessed, a crew member developed a very contentious relationship with their Direct Support (a member of the executive team who was notorious for terrorizing employees). When she approached another member of the exec team and asked for help, or to be assigned to another Direct Support, she was told “no.” Since there was no HR department for her to reach out to, she was stuck in a bad situation without guidance for how to navigate the difficult relationship. There is no consistency in the protocol for raises/promotions. In some departments, crew members are put through the wringer in order to earn promotions (months of weekly check-in meetings, progress tracking, and growth plans) while other departments will grant a promotion immediately upon request. My own Direct Support admitted to me that she didn’t understand the promotion process, and was unclear on the rules or protocol. Within your first week at Scribe, you are almost guaranteed to witness a fellow crew member publicly belittled in the office or over a group Zoom call. One executive, in particular, is notorious for making crew members cry in the office, yelling at them in public places, and cornering them when they express an opinion she doesn’t agree with. She has received a “talking to” from the rest of the executive team multiple times (if their response to inquiries is to be believed) but this has done little to curb her behavior. On multiple occasions, this exec entered a “private call room” to hold a Zoom call, then proceeded to yell so loud on the call that crew members in the public “bullpen” could hear her every word (including the person she was insulting on the call). There have been a number of very shady firings with very flimsy excuses. Most memorably, two crew members were let go for taking a strong stance against the executive mentioned in the point above. In this case, three members of the Author Experience team were asked to meet 1:1 with the CEO to discuss to morale issues in the department. The CEO very plainly stated that he “wanted to know the truth” and asked them to provide “the information that the department doesn’t want me to know.” 2 of the 3 employees pulled for these interviews specifically mentioned that the notoriously-cruel exec was the root of most morale issues in the department. Within the month following these meetings, these 2 crew members were fired. The reasoning given for these firings was not only very thin, but actually disprovable. Scribe functions on a “people are replaceable” attitude. Recently, the leadership team forgot that they made the notes from their Quarterly Planning meeting public for all crew members to see. These notes contained very clear indicators that the leadership team did not value their People. In fact, the party line included three major points: “if people are unhappy/morale is low, it is because they are toxic and refusing to conform to the culture”, “all of the complaints people have about poor processes and no support is a cover for their true complaint: they want more money”, and “if everyone quits tomorrow, we’ll survive.”