The last few months is where things totally fell apart. I realized that the founders (CEO and CTO) had already decided that they had zero confidence in my UX Director. The major reason I joined the company was to work with her because I KNEW she could build a solid UX strategy and follow through with it. So it was with great disappointment and confusion that things just didn't work out.
- Nepotism, favoritism, family… It runs absolutely rampant at this company. I understand this is unavoidable because we like to hire those we trust and relationships sometimes blossom, but the internal familial relations to top management has created a whitelist/blacklist type of environment where you find people just brown-nosing to get into the good graces of the "family". Unfortunately this lends itself to fostering a toxic environment.
- CEO: He's a nice guy and I don't have a problem with him personally, but he gets stuck on making well-thought-out and clear-minded decisions. I'm not saying it's an easy job at the top, but he might not actually be the right person to take on those responsibilities. For a company of this size and age, they really shouldn't be shooting from the hip on strategic planning (or lack of planning, thereof).
- CTO: He's not a nice guy. Arrogant, backstabbing, and lacking of emotional intelligence. He once got upset when I tried to present ideas around conversion rates during the checkout process. I had multiple ideas and one of them happened to be an outside-the-box solution that he didn't care for. He asked me if I knew how the company worked in the middle of the meeting which just shows that he wasn't really about coming up with solutions. In addition, I've noticed a hint of his misogynistic behavior which really concerns me. This is a serious red flag that should be somehow addressed.
The upper management consists of college roommates who have been running this company from the start, no doubt with plenty of blood, sweat, and tears throughout the years. They've lasted this long so there's got to be some method to their madness, right? But simply because you've been at the company the longest doesn't mean you've got the skills to lead.
