“You don’t leave a company you leave a manager” - IT Consultant Pliancy Employee Review

Marcus here, founder of Pliancy. Thank you for the candid review. I have some thoughts about certain points you bring up. First of all, I want to apologize for your negative employee experience with us. We do have a strong culture. I don’t think of it as a monoculture, but rather one that brings unique individuals together who share our values. If someone doesn’t fit the culture, they may not align with our values. For instance: one of our values, Bias For Action, results in an employee advancement model that favors merit and value over status and tenure. Not everyone wants to be part of a company that operates like that. But building a startup is always a work in progress. We’ll never have all the answers but we continue to learn a lot. One of the biggest investments we’ve made lately is in our hiring process. What was once a 2-hour interview process ending in a handshake is now a structured, collaborative 10-hour+ process designed to determine alignment with our values and team. You may be referring to a time in our history when our hiring practices were less mature, and we were small enough that it didn’t yet make sense financially for us to have a management hierarchy. Which brings me to what you said about our termination practices being a “black box.” When an employee and company aren’t a good fit, finding that delicate balance between respecting the individuals’ privacy and being transparent to the rest of the company is difficult. We try our best to get to the root of any problem early, and offer whatever personal and professional support is needed. We do have a process in place to work extensively with individuals who demonstrate that they want to remain on the team. But again, we’re much better at knowing how to offer valuable support today than we were earlier on. We’ve invested a lot in hiring roles that focus on improving management structure, support, and feedback loops across the quickly growing company—precisely so we can preempt any future growing pains. These are roles we unfortunately couldn’t afford before, and perhaps not during your tenure. Again, I apologize if you weren’t able to benefit from these recent improvements. I’m grateful you took the time to give feedback, however, as it helps create accountability to keep improving. Cheers!