Great mission, terrible culture, leadership and WLB
Pros
- really good mission - Very interesting and complicated problems to solve, especially when it comes to the integration of hardware/software -Re-inventing a whole industry that has been traditionally slacking/archaic is satisfying -Close interaction with customers and you can feel the impact you can make. -Smart people who are all passionate about the mission and the impact. -Cool space themed office -Comp is OK but the range is huge and there’s no consistency.
Cons
Terrible leadership -Director/VP/C level do not take any responsibility for their mistakes, ie. former VP’s and C level promised products with timelines without even hiring a team or knowing what it is (which are our two software teams at axon: CAD + Records software), was a huge failure and screwed over multiple people. But because they were buddy buddy with C level and in the white boys club, they get promotions or raises and the blame gets dispersed to anyone but them. -Leaders at axon (especially product) take credit for what their team does when in reality they cause more chaos and peddle the unrealistic deadlines/short term gains that investors/C level wants (we need to ship this now so our stock can go up for our quarterly report even though the product isn’t ready and the incomplete/buggy software can endanger lives). Nepotism: -Ton of nepotism, a ton of director level employees were previous LDP (axon’s rotational program). fresh out of college students (2 year exp) are very often placed in director/senior manager roles after their program because they were buds with the COO or CEO. These people are usually completely up equipped to do their jobs as a fresh out of college senior manager/director. - Tons of employees who are buddy buddy with the execs, when faced with failure, instead instead of being fired, they get moved to a new cushy position in another org and get a promotion/raise. As long as you’re friends with the C-level, you’re untouchable no matter how bad you mess up. Backstabbing, lying and amazon-lite culture -Reviews are bs, directors and managers are told to give people lower reviews and the system is skewed lower than average. -Employees are encouraged to lie, steal credit and bring other people down to have any sense of career progression. -The company is less about what you do but more about how well you play the game and are “visible” to the rest of the org. Thus it breeds a culture where people are clawing to take credit for any little thing and throw others under the bus to look better in comparison. People get fired all the time: -In the 4 years that I’ve been here, I’ve seen more people than I can count being fired. No work life balance: -Absolutely no work life balance, because of the unrealistic deadlines and insane amounts of scope creep. Leadership doesn’t understand that adding new features or taking on new initiatives/new scope requires either extending the deadline or removing scope. Teams are worked to the bones (especially the Seattle office) and strategy constantly changes making catching up impossible. No career growth: -No matter what you do there is no career growth regardless of how essential you are because it’s all about “visibility” and playing the game. People consistently get credit stolen by their boss/leaders and they promoted instead of the people that deserve it. Profits over good products -Axon thinks extremely short term and leaders want to ship product and create unrealistic deadlines so that once they hit it, a director or VP can get promoted. In order to this this they are ok with shipping buggy broken and blatantly dangerous/negligent product that can potentially endanger the lives of first responders (faulty body cams, tasers, and real time 9/11 software). -Bottom line/margins over safety, customer care and quality. It’s crazy since Axon spouts how great their mission is when they really don’t care about it and it’s just for PR/marketing.
