Your experience here is dictated by two things: How close you are to speaking with the CEO and who your direct supervisor is. The environment here can best be characterized as high volatility, low insulation from abuse.
Roadmaps, priorities, and work changed quickly (as in, you come in on Tuesday and by that after all of your work that was discussed to be done yesterday is out the window) and most of the time - without warning. Work is reprioritized based not on what management thinks or wants - but by whatever whims the CEO has for that day/week/month. This bypass creates absolute chaos on the contributor level. It ultimately caused us to constantly re-triage work without the ability to deliver well-thought out work.
You aren’t operating in a psychologically “safe” environment here. The communication from the CEO on a small email chain can be intense, abrupt, sometimes extremely inappropriate, and abusive.
The final nail in the coffin was spending a ludicrous amount of money on an off-site only to let over 100 of your workforce go, not by their individual managers but through a huge video call where the HR person refused to answer questions, was incredibly rude and insensitive to those of us on the call. This was not my first layoff, but it sure was by far the most poorly handled I’d ever seen.
