Asana prides itself on it’s diversity and inclusion but that is not what I experienced in my work there. Also, the organization boldly says “help humanity thrive by “enabling the world's teams to work together effortlessly” and overreach and exaggerate the product. While the org uses Asana and supposedly uses better than anyone else; chaos ranks supreme and I had to use other products in the tech stack to keep track of workflow. The multi-homing is unhelpful and superbly packed with noise, clutter and no clarity. The organization is lead tribally and less on process; in fact there are few processes and rarely is anything documented. One event a senior leader was surprised to hear comments from her organization which was a superb disconnect There are ways senior and middle management leaders can stay attuned to employee engagement. Engagement is faulty, not addressed and there is no connection to best practices in the SaaS industry or any other modern workplace or industry. There is no leadership or awareness of the organization's lack of profitability (it is a publicly held company). So many things the organization did was at the expense at COGS and ever achieving profitability. Profitability is never talked about and perhaps will become profitable by sprinkling pixie dust. The most sophisticated business I have ever worked. This organization has no business focus and most people are less than skilled to understand how to make a successful business. I got the sense that it was going to magically happen. Decision-after-decision was so superbly poor that it helped to exit 9% of staff out of a job in November 2022 - a superbly classless thing to do right before the holidays. When working there unless you are connected to someone in the food chain you will be burned and sacrificed in terms of layoffs. My manager was superbly disconnected and I did a majority of the work for the team. Talk is cheap and not clear cut; decisions are poor when made and hard to understand when a decision is made and details of those decisions. I knew people who were laid off with considerable experience while others with less experience were retained–I experienced this first hand. The layoffs disproportionately hit underrepresented people; the organization says one thing about diversity and inclusion but its actions show a major disconnect and no commitment to D&I representation. There is tone deafness to equity, equality, representation, runs forward and love the traditional good ole boy’s Silicon Valley corporate culture. Asana would hardly say they do “the right thing” but are ducking for cover to excuse bad management, managers, no end-to-end process development and ambiguity runs rampant. Ambiguity can be found in all organizations but it is how it is managed and addressed. Ambiguity certainly helps to promote people's inner circles/cliques. Ambiguity hurts those who are underrepresented - People of Color and women who are disadvantaged because we are not part of the inner sanctum and considered expendable and easily laid off. The hybrid work culture is a joke and if you go into work rest assured you might be the only one there and certainly will have to zoom to discover that few people go into the office. A terrible workplace that excuses its culture by giving a “free Lunch” but free does come at an expense. I did hear a fellow employee say “the food is good not great and there has to be more to come to the office three days a week” This is the prime company for Tech’s “let them eat cake” culture. Work-life balance doesn't exist here - I worked 7 day as week. This is my experience at Asana.
