See the headline. Toward the end of my time at Spreetail, 120 people were let go without warning, following several supposedly successful months at the company.
After our weekly meeting, we watched our coworkers pack up boxes, sobbing with just a 30-day severance package to get them through the month. When those people, departments, and Spreetail.com were cut so suddenly, despite all the cheerleading and meaningless financial jargon, the Spreetail we knew was replaced by another entirely different entity: Game of Thome.
Whereas I understand that Brett and his associates are human and flawed, (as we all are), their sudden, remorseless, and drastic cut left 120 talented people without jobs. This lay off, however, also left existing team members without hope.
Their creativity was stripped away and the team went back to doing mindless data entry. Meanwhile, Game of Thome's weekly saga continues - everyone shows up with a sense of foreboding. Whose head will be on the chopping block this week? What incestuous relationships occur among the higher-ups? What unanticipated power struggles will arise? And who will get axed in this next season? After the lay off, to boot, several high-performing people were then mysteriously demoted for reasons unknown.
Some of the people - most in fact - who work at Spreetail are wonderful, talented, and hardworking. Others, particularly some of the early career people, are absolutely crazy. But I can understand why.
They're an extremely high-anxiety, high-strung, humorless bunch who have worked to near-death and taken the mantra to a fanatical level. Look closely and you'll see a red ring of Kool-Aid around their mouths. The worst part is, management approves of and encourages this high-drama, emotional behavior with nonsense precepts of #actlikeanowner and #feedback and #difficultconversations. Spreetail consciously attracts high-achieving, largely white, entitled, and vulnerable kids - and the company makes them crazier, still, by convincing them that work is life. None of this is healthy.
You'll hear a lot of other jargon and buzzwords thrown around, too. "Difficult conversations" is one. "Practice humility" is another overused phrase, but that won't stop your reports from talking to your manager and HR behind your back.
As dictated by those lay offs, the company and management are unable to have those difficult conversations with problematic employees or uneasy situations . Whenever I met with higher-ups, I was horrified at how liberally they emphasize "difficult conversations" while they proceeded to evade those same, tough subjects with us and allowed entry-level employees to behave in unacceptable ways which would have terminated them anywhere else. I don't think management understands what these phrases mean or how cultish they have become.
This company could be cool if it they'd ditch their silly mantras and hashtags and cult-like intensity, didn't stoke entry-level employees' drama-fires, re-pieced their employees' shattered trust, and returned to practicing humility.
