Forward reviews

Some other reviews do a god job talking about culture. Below are some additional anecdotes. - Almost every con that employees experience is known by leadership to be a con, and so is pitched as a feature (e.g. lack of leveling is pitched as a good thing, but practically it means you will forever be shorted on compensation and held to ambiguous expectations). - Your performance will never be good enough. Did you get "Meets Expectations" for well over a year? You might get a meager raise that’s below inflation to bring you up to 50% of the market rate for your role (not 50th percentile)! Did you push hard to get "Exceeds Expectations"? You might not get any adjustment -- it's just how Forward rolls! Forward bases salaries on the 30th percentile of comparably cheap companies, and routinely does not beat inflation YoY. Despite your growing experience and context, Forward will not see you as having increased in value as rapidly as bread, or pay-by-weight frozen yogurt. - You will be treated as poorly as leadership can get away with. Do you perhaps feel underpaid? Do you know that new-grad hires in the same role are getting paid more than you are, despite your experience? Forward will absolutely not adjust your compensation proactively until you make it clear that you know specifically how you're underpaid. Leadership is also not a stranger to gaslighting you about your pay, benefits, or performance, both in Slack and in-person. - Are you constantly on-call for a new product? Your CEO might just tag you in a thread to tell you and anyone following along that you’re ruining the company. Do you want to scroll through posts from your CEO and not be irked? I hope you don’t mind him sharing a Twitter thread that tries to tie the Buffalo shooting to how the healthcare system and health insurance is failing people. I also hope you don’t mind him sharing a Twitter thread that mentions how Uber’s hiring changed dramatically when they put women on every interview panel, and hear his perspective on how he personally saw interactions with women as uncomfortable (this is a light interpretation of his literal words), and how looking women in the eyes could be something that’s learned on the job. - Is it toxic for company culture to have open communication with peers, sharing with each other what you earn and what raises or adjustments you've received? As an employee who wants to be treated fairly alongside their peers, your answer might reasonably be "No, that's not toxic. In fact it's been protected under federal law since the 1930’s to have conversations with coworkers and strangers alike about compensation. If anything it gives employees more agency". Leadership will pull you aside into an individual meeting to berate you and tell you that you “shouldn't talk with others” about anything to do with compensation, and insist that doing so is considered “toxic” to the culture. - Do you care about flexibility with where you work? Forward does care about flexibility, in that they care that you do not have flexibility. Leadership insists that the company is a 5-day per week in-office company, despite leadership chronically working remotely more often than many non-leaders. Do you need some time Thursday evening from 6-7pm PST to go grocery shopping, do laundry, let your dog out, take the kids to swim practice, care for a loved one, or do anything for yourself or others? Ah jeez, that's too bad! You're not unlikely to get a DM from your manager for missing the weekly company All-Hands that's at that time. As one out-of-touch leader in engineering put it, "there are services you can pay for to do your laundry, do your cleaning, take care of your dog, deliver groceries…”. So I suppose maybe just use some of the money you surely earned from BigRideshareCompany's IPO to pay for those services, since you won't be able to afford it with Forward's salary. - Do you care about diversity? Oh cool! Forward has internal groups ostensibly affiliated with DEI efforts. Hm what’s that? You’re asking why so many women leaders seem to leave across all orgs within the business? Must be a them thing! Definitely not related to pervasive issues.
 
 Why are so many people leaving? Pfft, that’s not a trend — don’t read into it. 

 Okay okay, well Forward’s mission *is* noble. I mean healthcare for a billion people for free? Sounds amazing! Oh you want to know how? Well that's simple — first they'll hire only people who can already afford to live in SF, can afford to move into SF, or can afford to live near enough to be able to commute to the single corporate office every day... Hmm? Did I hear you say that that excludes most individuals with valuable experiences, perspectives, and skills, from diverse backgrounds and economic and health statuses? See that's where you're wrong! It's just a hiring problem — Forward needs to hire more *recruiters* to find the people *here* who have the know-how to make healthcare for 3 times the population of the US. Well, at least despite all this the culture is super healthy right? I mean it's totally normal for employees at any company to be so afraid of leadership that they only talk in hushed voices in small groups when discussing generalities of the workplace. That thread where the CEO mentioned how he couldn't talk to women when he was younger, and how treating women as less can be trained on the job just like learning how to do a jam can be trained? The disdain following belittling all-hands talks? No one would ever actually take issue with those.