Corporate Tools reviews

- Many managers, no real leadership. The problem is middle managers are stripped of any power and upper management are expected to be “yes” men. We need our managers to be empowered to make the best decisions for employees and projects. But the priorities of the company perpetuate a cycle where upper management pushing their will down the chain and each layer of management in between essentially being order takers. Meanwhile the people who understand best how to handle the problems are on the ground floor. So problems aren’t being solved effectively or efficiently. - They have broken the trust of their employees who once felt comforted by the idea that the company is doing well, cared about employees, there was no cap on salary or raises and “no layoffs”. Welp, they done laid ~10% of the company off so that positive vibe is extinguished. This decision created a ripple of negativity throughout the company and I’m certain it will haunt them for a long time to come. Don’t get me wrong - every company has layoffs. It’s not hard for people to grasp that if you aren’t making enough money, you need to make cuts. However, the message that has been peddled repeatedly is that we are doing great. The manifestations of that have been a multi-million dollar budgeted trip for the whole company to go to Las Vegas just 3 months prior to the layoffs, as well as continuously hiring new employees. Not just a few, tens of employees per month. So, you can see how it seems a bit contradictory to the “we don’t have money in the budget” story. If you read between the lines a bit you can see the real reason for these cuts. The company recently combined its brands into one. They started getting great traction on their job requisitions. With much more competition between people applying, they need not hold onto some of their more tenured and higher paid employees. They’re replaceable now. And that’s business. But where this is detrimental to the company is their culture was one that purported to “care”. When I arrived and people told me that I laughed. No company “cares”. At least once they get successful enough to have an opportunity to not care. And now everyone realizes that. So the special sauce is gone. Good job.

- CEO/guy at the top is a loose cannon. When he steps back and lets everyone else run the show, everything is great! Work gets done, very little stress, everyone's happy. When he starts getting involved in everything though, it all hits the fan. He berates management inappropriately and the whole company responds to his "asks" in fear. He doesn't back any of his ideas up with data, it's always on his whims of what he thinks makes sense (usually it doesn't), and management doesn't stand up to him (or when they do, they get literally screamed at). He's infamous for his unhinged emails (think Trump, but left-leaning) that he sends out, usually something politically or racially inappropriate is included. Things change rapidly based on this guy's whims, often a change will be made and then he will turn around and say we did it wrong so management scrambles to do it the "right" way and rinse and repeat. I do think there's regularly miscommunication happening from what he is asking for and what leaders think he wants. It all tends to give whiplash. - They laid off over 10% of the company. First they did a "soft" layoff by restructuring and removing the need for product management roles (we became "too corporate"), giving these PMs/admin roles the option to choose a new role or take severance. Okay, cool, that's fair. Then a week later they laid of 138 people unceremoniously across the company, many of which had been with the company for many years and contributed heavily, people you'd think of as irreplaceable (though, of course, no one is). They did this in a mass virtual call, refused to answer questions, and that was that. Direct managers had zero clue this was coming and that some of their employees were in a meeting being laid off. They found out during or after the fact. Come to find out, the PMs that were laid off the week before were strung along and not actually allowed to move to different roles after all and were effectively laid off as well, it was just meant to ease everyone into the idea of layoffs (is my guess). - They just threw a huge, exorbitant, painfully expensive party in vegas this summer. Don't get me wrong, it was great. But it was unnecessary, and in an email from the CEO immediately following the layoff, he admits to the layoffs being partly because they spent so much in Vegas. He also says that he "thought everyone knew this is where we were headed with the restructuring...". Very tone deaf. - Work life balance suffered from the CEO getting involved in every little thing. Suddenly everything was a fire and broken and needed fixing yesterday. - Basically, everyone in the company is awesome except the five people at the top. And that was mostly fine, didn't affect those lower down much for multiple years until CEO started micromanaging again this year. - The layoff came shortly after the guy "encouraged" creating a DEI committee And then many in the layoff were the most active in the committee... - They give everything a different name to be "unique" or "fun". It's not "severance", it's "the tenure rewards package". It's not "DEI", it's "DII" (diversity in influence). It's not a sprint progress report, it's a "TPS report" (stolen from Office Space). Literally this guy renames everything, it's annoying. - In the email following the layoff, he says they're going to start hiring again in December... - Overall, I can't recommend the company to a friend. The company itself is a bit shady in its practices and it's all from the people at the top. I felt icky telling anyone about the job while I worked there. The benefits and amazing coworkers just can't make up for the root rot.