- Reactive management style
- Lack of trust in and appreciation for employees
- Raises can be hard to come by
- Vacation time not respected (work will find you)
- Bonus not trustworthy
- Cultish Self-Help philosophies
- No feeling of job security
- Continual setup for failure
- Toxic environment
A confused, chaotic, myopic work environment.
If you're reading this review and a Rhythm (or former) Rhythm employee, stop right here. Go outside, look around, and realize the world doesn't center around a company selling after-market parts and services for traffic signals.
As a whole, the company generally follows good management advice straight off a cliff. There's a lot of boasting about "creative freedom" and "lack of micromanagement". The reality is a substantial amount of drive-by management to "solve problems" previously minor in scope with "solutions" that derail progress. Realizing a problem with progress, management has attempted to reform by doubling down. They're adding more and stronger management with the goal to better manage everyone to create a non-micromanaged managed environment with management.
Over the past 4+ years, the company has indulged in multiple attempts to evolve and expand its product line with a 0% success rate. Costumers no longer take any new product announcement or talk seriously as they have heard nothing but promises and no delivery. Few of the original team that built the product and environment remain. The managers and engineers capable of seeing a product through from concept to completion are largely gone. Good ideas and concepts are thrown out before they have time to mature. Decisions do not seem to be based in logic and reason, rather come at random and are badly timed and destructive.
There's a lot of talk of "growth", but the reality is this company wants to be the next Apple, but not move through the stages that every other large successful company does. There's a lot of "we need to do this because we are growing", without any real focus on why big companies do those things. On bad days, you get to see the insecurity of a startup combined with the glacial movement of an IBM or GM. My day would have my internal dialog ranging from "I'm at Sprint" to "well, this is amateur hour".
The reviews on this site illustrate the level of dysfunction this company faces. In the "Rhythm Bubble", the fact a few angry words on the internet were published by random posters somehow equates to a full-on attack against the company. The review history shows 2 positive reviews posted after a 1 star negative review. Rhythm simply can't have someone else have the last word. At this point, the review rate defies credulity as it approaches a 100% participation rate of past and current employees.
