Take note of Glassdoor's flag on manipulated reviews; from buying followers to inflating reviews, performative short cuts over substance abound.
(On that Glassdoor rating, there was a while there where it sounded like the poor ratings were making it into the board meetings. The fix, rather than to adjust the things driving the poor ratings, was to fix the ratings themselves.)
From 2022-2024, quarterly lay-offs were the norm. (For many of them, there was phrasing around many being "performance-based" if/when they were addressed, but each also had pockets of managers that did not know they were laying off their direct reports within the next 12 hours. And the music choices and vibes of the following town halls were definitely... something else.) While it's been a minute since there have been over/under bets on the tenure of SLT, that was a thing for a while there. 2025 to date has been marked by some wild attrition, whether folks had something lined up or not.
Essentially, the turnover is real and constant, and it wasn't uncommon to see folks who had more than 3 managers in a year. Be prepared for the associated chaos.
With that turnover, strategy and alignment across the organization (as well as execution) suffered. Repeatedly. (And will probably continue to do.)
In many teams, you will be under-resourced for the goals set. Further complicating/compounding that problem are pet projects and priorities that are going to come in from on high that likely won't be driving any meaningful progress towards any of your or the company's goals. (You will occasionally be handed the same pet project as a handful of other people, and if you don't know to ask, you're all about to waste a few hours in your silos.)
Along with those pet projects, you'll also be asked to embrace leadership's latest philosophies — some of these things will be useful, some will be distractions, but there's a certain amount of expectation around the lot. (Performance and image are a recurring theme in many of the reviews from folks who've made it past a year — I'd suggest you weigh those more than reviews from folks with their rose-tinted glasses.)
Despite the turnover and verbiage around performance, there are absolutely still pockets of people who claim credit and receive the compensation for work other employees and/or teams are doing or finding workarounds for. (If you're the person who clings to silver linings, you can take that as an opportunity to learn how to own adjacencies or even entire projects from end-to-end. You'll also typically find plenty of folks to commiserate with because if those people you work around are C-Suite favorites, no amount of manager documentation around the lack of output is actually enough to get them fired.)
Unlimited PTO is a thing, and Wellness Days have made a reappearance, but neither actually put a moratorium on being contacted about work on a holiday, a weekend, and/or while you're off. (To be fair, the expectation to be responsive and provide a timeline is *usually* stronger than the expectation to actually execute during those moments.)
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The prevailing philosophy over the past year or so has been to just not pay vendors unless absolutely necessary; it got to the point where it was definitely impacting the brand and other vendors' willingness to work with us. (I don't think the marketing/sales teams had fielding unpaid vendors at tradeshow booths on their bingo card, but here we are.) On the one hand, being sent to collections, on the other hand, talks of M&A.
On the note of financials, do not expect raises or title bumps; those are the exception, not the rule, even if you're consistently hitting it out of the park. (If you're coming in, make sure you negotiate well on the front-end because many folks who've been there for years have not received either.)
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Resilience may be a core value in theory, but in practice, survival is the more accurate portrayal of it. You will not be alone in developing poorer physical and mental health outcomes as a result of working at SSC.
Although if I had a dollar for every time someone said or wrote "10x it", I could have funded a sabbatical.
