Where to begin... Crunchyroll has a serious management issue. Senior management has been instilling for a while a culture of fear and hostility. Hidden behind constant fake smiles, and over-the-top praise of the 'chosen few', is a company that is working hard at increasing a toxic environment and lack of accountability, promoting or hiring completely unqualified leaders, and passive aggressively handling anyone who dares to ask questions.
- You will get fired for disagreeing with management. Not because you are not doing your job, and what management demands, simply by asking questions, or trying to get clarification, about the rational behind some of the direction that's being asked.
- 'Anonymous' questions, something that was available to everyone during all-hands meetings as a safe way for people to ask questions, got recently removed because senior management said you would need to be accountable for your questions. This then has triggered some senior management (including c-level executives, not just mid-management) having lengthy 1:1 sessions with people asking difficult questions, and being told they needed to improve their attitude (these were not controversial questions, just simple ones like for example improving company's perception, or retaining talent). Besides the obvious fear and hostility this generates, it's uncanny to have the top executive team drilling down on individual employees just for asking questions during company meetings. You would think execs would have more important things to work on...
- The hiring process for senior management (Directors and above) has become incredibly absurd. Most recent hires are just completely unqualified, both within their particular field, as well as in the 'people management' front. Many just lack general '101 management' skills, and makes you wonder if they've actually ever managed anyone before. Comments such as 'do this because I'm your boss, and don't ask questions'. And to top that, there are sexist comments as well! Don't expect to have any sort of freedom and decision making power, unless you are a Director or above, as you will be micromanaged to oblivion. And isn't it funny how these same people keep repeating during meetings things like 'and please tell me if I'm micromanaging you because I hate doing that' (hint: don't say anything, or you'll get some serious passive aggression thrown your way).
- A lot of decisions, particularly on the technical side, are just being done out of spite. Two different technical teams came together with the merger between Funimation and Crunchyroll, and management completely failed at integrating these two groups. Factions emerged, and people fired when in the 'wrong' one. A bigger cause of concern is that these are also determining technical direction for the company; decisions being taken illogically, despite much higher cost, out of pettiness rather than common sense.
Yes, there are definitely things that can be improved on the engineering side, and yes, some of the old Crunchyroll engineering guard was definitely not the fastest to adapt to new systems, or the more flexible. But there is a weird 'holier-than-thou' attitude from the old Funimation guard, a 'we know everything and we are going to rebuilt all the apps with completely different tech' approach, which is puzzling considering the Funimation apps seemed to generally be less stable and have a lower user rating than the Crunchyroll ones (regardless of personal preference for UI, and content).
If you thought the Crunchyroll app was unstable today, just wait until some of these finally trickle down the actual products.
- Senior management doesn't have a clue what they are doing. They love to extract and reinterpret data (ex. using the height of the pandemic growth as the 'standard service growth') to make it fit whatever they need to at any give point in time. I suppose even the CEO has a boss (that'd be the Sony Pictures CEO), and he needs to promise the moon on a stick in order to keep his bonus. It's clear these are not achievable with the current direction and waste of resources, but you won't last long if you dare to ask about though, be warned...
There is a lot more I could comment on, but this should give people an idea of the kind of company Crunchyroll has become. I cannot recommend this to anyone at the moment, there a lot better places to work for.
