As mentioned in all other reviews here, the abusive behavior of the company owner is - by an order of magnitude - the most miserable part of the Action Verb work experience (although the other parts are still quite miserable). For an example of some of his disparaging, insulting, childish, and inappropriate behaviors:
* He openly and publicly berates employees for their mistakes, often in all-caps letters, often for minor mistakes or mistakes made in good faith, often for mistakes not even yet made but simply in response to questions of "Should I do X or Y?," often in multiple Slack channels specifically for the purpose of embarrassing the employee
* He thought it was appropriate to give the middle finger to the camera during an all-hands video conference because he was angry at an employee. When, later, he asked if anyone thought that what he had done was inappropriate, he was SHOCKED to see several employees raise their hands and assert that, yes, giving the middle finger to your subordinate is, in fact, inappropriate.
* Same as the above, except replace the middle finger with a profanity leveled directly at an employee.
* Is snide whenever giving compliments, always being sure to add qualifiers to imply your fundamental stupidity and inferiority (i.e., saying "that's actually a good idea" rather than just "that's a good idea," implying that most employees' ideas are bad)
* He frequently reminds people that, as company owner, he can fire anyone at any time, purposefully creating a culture of fear and submission
* He uses his position of power to break well-established processes, such as interrupting people during meetings when the meeting structure does not allow for interruptions.
* He assumes that employees are stupid and/or have bad intentions, and frequently accuses them of both.
* He uses various items that should be benefits as cudgels against you. For example:
* [1] He uses your salary as a cudgel against you. "I'm paying you $X amount, and I don't expect [profanity] like this from a professional who I'm paying $X to. You should be embarrassed to have done this work."
* [2] He uses Holacracy as a cudgel against you. "If you don't like something, you should just change it through Holacracy. It gives you the power to change what you don't like." However, when you attempt to change something, he either blocks it outright, removes you from your position, or undoes the change immediately. Thus, Holacracy becomes nothing but a veil for his dictatorship.
* He randomly changes rules/procedures to benefit his abusive tendencies. For example:
* [1] He one day randomly began berating employees for not delivering "5-star service" in every single capacity that they were related to. There had never been a single mention of 5-star service in the history of the company.
* [2] When he realized that Holacracy was too thin of a veil for his dictatorship, he simply threw it out and replaced it with what he now calls "avOS" (we all roll our eyes at this also), which is basically a stolen Holacracy constitution (as in: he stole open-source work and privatized it) with a handful of changes that make the company owner a direct, unquestionable dictator. It also includes gems such as: "Do not 'help out' another Role by dumping a problem in their lap." How can this possibly be interpreted in a meaningful way? And yet, employees are expected to treat it seriously as a "Constitution" of the workplace.
* He uses performance reviews as his passive-aggressive punishment for people who don't pay him enough submission/respect and reward for those in his inner circle.
* He is over 30 and still thinks it's appropriate to namedrop Harvard on interview calls. I had to add this one because it's just so amazingly childish.
Beyond these already alarming issues, there are a few more that I personally find extremely alarming. Basically, he grooms and compels employees in a way that is not dissimilar from cult leaders. Grooming takes the form of calling employees at the beginning of their time with the company to see if they will submit to/respect him and, in turn, insult and belittle their fellow employees. These calls can occur several times per day, for up to/more than several hours per day. It is truly shocking and horrifying behavior. Fittingly, he is also a huge advocate of a well-known "self-help" cult (you can research about Landmark Forum if you want to learn more about their abusive and high-pressure tactics) and pushes their (costly) "services" on those whom he grooms. It may not surprise you that this cult practices public abuse in ways that echo the company owner's public abuse.
Aside from all of the above things related specifically to the company owner, there are also these negatives:
* The work is generally pretty boring
* The main product is not very interesting
* There's a weird second product called Vae that no one likes or uses or knows how it works, but the company owner keeps it around because his girlfriend uses it, or something. It's an annoying distraction and we all wanted it gone.
* The pay is not that good
* The benefits are not that good
* There's lots of technical debt (still on Rails 4, not getting any closer to Rails 5), and due to understaffing, it's getting worse as time goes
I wrote this all out not because I have some vendetta against the company or its owner, but because I truly and sincerely don't want to allow anyone to live through the things that myself and my coworkers did. I'm hoping that the weight of this evidence against the worth of working at Action Verb will be enough to convince you that it is not in your interest to work there.
If you are skeptical and considering working here, please insist on calling several current employees before accepting any job offer. With the possible exception of the one or two members of the shifting "inner circle" at that time, I'm confident that everything above will be confirmed outright.
