Companies Are Not Your Community
Pros
The Sales team is motivated, the IT and Client Service staff are friendly and very knowledgeable. I was treated well by my colleagues in Marketing throughout my time at the company and would be happy to serve as a referral for any of them.
Cons
My story at Projector is a cautionary tale for anyone going to a company where VCs/investors have major operational influence. The main reason I joined Projector was that I was excited to go to a growth-focused company with a team passionate about digital marketing. I had been unemployed for several months at the time of my interview, and despite the subpar salary and benefits and the fact I still had some other offers pending, made the decision to join Projector based on that work culture. However, during my first few months with the company, I was limited in what tactics was able to put forward (basically I was only working on Google ads PPC, directory management, and some light email marketing), because there was a rebrand/website relaunch coming and the company was saving all of their marketing capital for that launch. Unfortunately, a few days after that big relaunch and rebrand, key personnel quit on zero notice to go to a direct competitor, and it was discovered multiple parts of this giant project were broken and unfinished. Myself and a relative new hire spent weeks cleaning up this unfinished work to get these digital rebranding assets in presentable condition, rather than working on growth-focused initiatives. Also, while this was going on, the executive team was shopping agencies to also handle digital marketing work. I was repeatedly assured I was not being outsourced/replaced and any agency hired would supplement my work. This turned out to be a lie. A short time after Marketing had the rebrand/relaunch under control, (and I'll never forget, a day after we had a company-wide meeting with a guest speaker where we were encouraged to share our hardships with COVID and how we overcame them as a team), I had a "quick check-in" (exact meeting title) put on my calendar, and at that meeting I was informed I was in fact having my role eliminated in favor of an agency, because the VC board was still holding Marketing to original 2020 lead goals despite the onset of COVID and the massive unexpected midyear turnover in the department. My formal termination was set for mid-January, 6 days before my (pitifully small) equity stake and my 401k would have vested. Oh, and my wife was pregnant (although to be fair no one knew that at the time), so goodbye to the Massachusetts PFML benefit I was counting on at the time too. Luckily, I found another role at a new company that I enjoy very much prior to my termination date, with a great Marketing team that wants to actively explore new demand gen strategies and tactics. So to summarize, I was never put in a position to succeed at Projector, was let go because a VC board that had no insight into day-to-day operations held the company to unrealistic performance standards given marketplace conditions, and the executive team was unwilling and/or unable to stand up for me. This happened despite the fact that myself and the Marketing team fixed all the problems caused by significant personnel turnover to the absolute best of our ability, often working far past typical hours. I was motivated to write this because their executive team still uses the "community/family/positive work culture" talking points in their social media posts looking for new hires and that genuinely upsets me. My advice to anyone working at a small SaaS company with heavy VC influence/control is to go in knowing that your situation can change unexpectedly, and to always have your eye on job boards if there is any hint of restructuring, regardless of what you're told.
