Pros
Pro: Salary, equipment, comradery between an ever growing team of colleagues who are all in the same (negative) boat - it might be strange to have this as a pro and whilst you never wish bad on someone it is nice to have the support on others and know you are not alone, sadly this group always gets smaller with every round of layoffs!
Cons
Con: Someone has to take a stance against what is going on at Solsten. There has already been 3 rounds of lay-off's this year so naturally there will be folks posting their reviews. Solsten have: - asked us all to do positive reviews at the beginning of this year - had reviews removed from Glassdoor, it's the major gossip in the office! Glassdoor this is not on!!! The response from Solsten to one of the reviews states: - "Feedback is taken very seriously at Solsten". This is a LIE! - "We encourage anyone interview for any open role to reach out and talk to current team members". Don't do this, go onto Linkedin and speak to EX-Solsten employees if you seek the truth! Current team members are to scared to being fired, in this current job market climate - "Layoffs happened approximately a year ago". LIE! 3 layoff rounds this year already, layoffs are common at Solsten and when you do get laid off be prepared to have the founders blame you for multiple things you did not do. It is only a matter of time before someone submits a lawsuit for perjury against them - "The founders at Solsten are both open to feedback and take it seriously". I mean if ever there was a LIE it is this one. The founders are the biggest ego driven narcissists you will ever meet, but are also extremely insecure at the same time. This leads to mass control as they try to ensure others are only aligned to their view. If you step out of line or voice an opinion be prepared to be cut from the cult! - "Solsten tracks employee satisfaction and currently has an eNPS of 77" - LIE Some other things they lie about - Amount of customers they have - Amount of revenue they are doing A large % of customers do not renew, which says it all. The founder can only sell the product by giving it away at huge discount, which only tells a customer that you have no belief in your product at its actual RRP price-point. This puts us on the back-foot from day one. It is not a good strategy. There are a lack of processes, no on-boarding, no training and no KPI's. You are micromanaged and sadly the senior leadership below the founders do not have the strength to stand-up to the founders, you can see the stress in every single one of them and sadly they relay that onto their teams. Solsten has a history of paying off staff because they are extremely scared that the truth about them will become public. The fact the founders lay into people in public slack channels means that everyone can see what they are really like! To sum up the founders act like they are inspirational leaders, but are actually just dictators. with a new round of senior leaders starting at the beginning of 2023 many were hoping for positive change. Sadly it quickly reverted to the status-quo with the founders unable to let go. The truth is they are running their own company into the ground, they actually managed to hire many good people but # won't let those people do what they are paid to do! We've all heard the rumours of a sale, the only hope current employees have of a normal work-place is for a sale to happen and the founders to be removed from the company. Going through an acquisition can be scary and many potentially end up at the unemployment line but it would at least give the company a chance of being normal.