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My CEO’s rating on Glassdoor is so bad that all we are getting are shitty hires

159 points by caaqil 5y ago

bell-cot 5y ago
GTFOASAP
Demiurge 5y ago
I worked at a company with a comically terrible (criminal) CEO. The year I quit, the company Glassdoor rating went from average to bad due to multiple reviews. Half a year later, after more people quit, I see lots of fake reviews, the worst (accurate) reviews gone, and the rating is back to decent. Apparently, even seemingly good things can be subverted.
zibzab 5y ago
Why are you still there, with the job market being what it is now? I mean, you fairly quickly see where this is going to lead. Why stay in a sinking ship?
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Some folks need some encouraging. Encourage them!
gameswithgo 5y ago
How hard is it for an employee to request a meeting with the board, generally?
- onphonenow 5y ago
  Why? You take a lot of personal risk when you do end runs to a board for this type of thing. The normal solution is to go out and get a new job -> I've done that with crazy bosses. Very simple. You can even leave on OK terms.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nrmitchi 5y ago
  You'd really have to have a lot to lose (in comparison to just taking a new job) under the current company in order to take that chance (think a large value of options, etc). You'd have better luck if you already had some sort of existing relationship with the board, but that doesn't really apply if you're asking this question.
- ipnon 5y ago
  You do not want to stand out at these companies. From experience, you will get fired. Morale is at rock bottom, no one is working hard, the only benefit is that expectations are near the limit of nothing so long as you do even the most miniscule actions of value. Working at Hell Corporation with CEO Satan is incredibly depressing. The reason people don't leave is that interviewers can smell the desperation and downtroddenness. This is coupled with not having written anything except muddy meatballs on top of spaghetti code for your tenure. Evil CEOs are a feature in these companies. They crush the souls of their workers to prevent them from being able to leave. It usually works long enough for the founders to sell their stakes to a witless VC before the whole operation explodes in a ball of fire.
  - paxys 5y ago
    Getting fired (with a severance package/unemployment benefits) may be preferable to voluntarily quitting out of frustration and getting nothing.
  - bagels 5y ago
    If you are on your way out already, the calculus changes a little.
- axg11 5y ago
  Very difficult, and frankly pointless. I have seen employees take problems to the board in the past _if_ they already have a working relationship with board members. Otherwise, you are signalling yourself as an employee that cannot successfully work with the company's management. At best, the board will take actions based on your advice, but you will still compromise your own position within the company. The calculus is simple: in many startups the CEO owns 10-60% of the company. A very senior early employee who negotiated well on options/equity? Optimally <0.5%.
- flybrand 5y ago
  The board will say “yes” in their response cc’ing the leadership.
- dreamcompiler 5y ago
  I've been in this situation and fortunately I came to my senses. The board hired a sociopathic CEO who was running the company into the ground and driving away all the good engineers. I came up with a concrete and inexpensive plan for turning the company around which I thought had about a 50/50 chance of making the company so successful it would own its market, which was brand new at the time. It was largely simple stuff like not making the same dumb mistakes over and over. I thought about taking the plan to the board, and then I realized: A. The board members talk to the CEO every day, but I've never even met most of them. Who do I think they're going to listen to? B. Everybody on the board is rich. If those guys lose $50 million they shrug their shoulders, sail to Bermuda for a month of R&R, and get right back on the investing horse. C. I owe the board members nothing. NOTHING. I was hired as a staff engineer, not as a turnaround expert for a failing company. D. The most likely outcome of me talking to the board is me getting fired and nothing else changing. In fact that's the only realistic possible outcome. So I quit. And immediately got a better job. The company continued declining and eventually fired the sociopath CEO but by that time a better company had come along that now owns that market. You can't fix stupid. All you can do is leave.
xtracto 5y ago
Ha reminds me of a previous company I worked at. The amount of exec and employee turnover was horrible. Yet the CEO and company have good ratings on Glassdoor. And the CEO sincerely believes that such turnover is a feature.
serverlessmom 5y ago
Wow this is horrifying. It's time to abandon the ship and take your very valuable skills someplace they will be appreciated. In my experience with people like the CEO described here they are usually people whom are unable to engage in self reflection, but somehow delivering that rating to the CEO to see how miserable his rating is may be a much needed wake up call.
snorkel 5y ago
Whole situation sounds like typical startup growing pains and this is the OPs first rodeo of this kind. The original crew of developers was happy during the early days when it was all cozy and limitless upside, but now there's new funding, new bosses, new managers, new processes, new rules, new coworkers that "don't get it" and that old fun and cozy vibe is lost. The new CEO will likely be fired by the board too, but face it, the cozy days are over. So either find yourself a role in that circus that you like, or quit.
- burkaman 5y ago
  This is absolutely not normal. If you find yourself relating to this post, please start looking for a new job immediately, I promise it's not like this everywhere.
  - bduerst 5y ago
    Yeah, this feels like a no-true-scotsman, except for 'startups', made to discredit OP's reality. Telling OP to ignore the writing on the wall and show loyalty to a toxic leader is not good advice.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >This is absolutely not normal. Is it "normal" for a company to stay "cozy and limitless upside" even as it grows to hundreds of employees? >If you find yourself relating to this post, please start looking for a new job immediately The parent post literally mentions quitting as one option.
    - burkaman 5y ago
      > Is it "normal" for a company to stay "cozy and limitless upside" even as it grows to hundreds of employees? No it isn't, but that's not relevant to this discussion. Nobody made any claim of limitless upside. > The parent post literally mentions quitting as one option. Yes, but it implied you're likely to find the same thing anywhere that's not a super early stage startup, which is not true.
- 5y ago
faeyanpiraat 5y ago
The "dead sea effect" is an interesting new concept I learned from that post.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  Yeah, me too. I worked at a place in the 90s that was absolutely going in that direction, but I had no word for the phenomenon. They were an all Vax/VMS shop in the mid-90s, and they paid developers criminally low wages even for the era. I was hired in an analyst/project management role at a considerably higher salary, which of course made my group unpopular with the dev rank and file. Turnover was insane -- like, 40% a year in the dev & IT department. Those that stayed were, generally speaking, those that either couldn't conceive of seeking another job, or were unable to do so. This is not a recipe for a functional or high-achieving group even without that by-that-point religious adherence to the party line on (a) the long-term viability of VMS and Digital generally or (b) the wisdom of insisting that damn near everything be built from scratch, even the database system.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
    > the wisdom of insisting that damn near everything be built from scratch, even the database system. NIH is literally software cancer. We've done it dozens of times and it hasn't worked once...
    - ubermonkey 5y ago
      It also drives the Dead Sea thing, because to do anything effective in such an environment you have to learn all sorts of esoteric and only-useful-here tech (sometimes even languages!), which takes time you could be using to learn marketable skills.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  It's what I think Amazon/AWS is going through now. When they were in "fun growth" mode their obnoxious Bezosisms didn't really matter, but they are settling into an enterprise/utility/long term company. Their raising the bar and stack ranking and forced attrition and blame culture and backstabbing and sacrificial hires won't work. Instead, they produce a dead sea effect where you aren't getting good people, you're either getting sociopaths or people that don't have options to go elsewhere and not be organizationally abused. Because if you're good, you can go elsewhere. Other FAANG, etc. Did you see all the outages in AWS in December? Utilities have long-standing employees because they do long-term support and know the systems. Amazon's hiring does not reward or structure itself that way. It's for churning people. If you get a creepy impression from the hiring (and Amazon hiring should DEFINITELY do that)... well... I would say most people that go there are doing it for the resume and they are out within two years. The people I knew who went there were exactly that. Then they cashed out to better jobs.
manuelabeledo 5y ago
> The company’s solution was to mass hire to make up for the losses. Yeah, this company is in life support, then. There is this other company where there are a handful of the shittiest managers I have ever heard of in my whole career. As a result, most key engineers are leaving, and the company is ramping up hires. They don't seem to understand that it doesn't matter how many more people you hire, if all the know-how and leadership has vanished already.
- exdsq 5y ago
  > if all the know-how and leadership has vanished already. The final nail in the coffin after this happening is a software rewrite by the bad quality hired because A) maintaining and extending software is hard 2) it's even harder without any original engineers around to guide designs 3) it's easy to blame people who aren't there for your issues so "the existing software sucks". I've seen this happen a few times.
trentnix 5y ago
My first thought reading this is that I'm happy Glassdoor is actually having an impact. 15 months ago I started work as a Software Manager at a large arts and crafts retailer. Much of the job seemed completely in line with my interest and what I wanted to do, but two weeks in I figured out the place was clownishly toxic and the CTO, despite an impressive educational background, had a cartoonish understanding of how software is made. So I resigned and sought new opportunities. I've never worked less than 18 months at any job, and that made leaving a tough pill to swallow. Looking at the reviews on Glassdoor (and TeamBlind) left since my departure, I can see my intuitions were spot on. Reviewers' descriptions of the environment seem absurd, but unfortunately they are completely consistent with what my spider-sense was telling me. I hope Glassdoor has helped others avoid the misery of employment there.
- georgeecollins 5y ago
  I feel like savvy companies can game Glassdoor. Like reviews online, it may be useful to learn what to look for but not so useful as an overall raring.
  - rchaud 5y ago
    Glassdoor is like Yelp, bad reviews can be scrubbed for a price. Companies like these may have a noble mission at the start, but housing people's reviews isnt' profitable. Acting as a PR firm however, is.
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      Feels like it wouldn't be too hard to make a simple review site on IPFS. Have a client based filter for spam - but then the filter can be confirmed by every client by visiting the blacklisted reviews. Honestly might be a fun weekend project...
      - dwaltrip 5y ago
        What happens when fake reviews come pouring in?
aynsof 5y ago
I'm stunned at the board's complete lack of awareness. I would have hoped that any competent board member would want to view metrics around retention and morale, and that large shifts would be something they'd dig into.
amriksohata 5y ago
Brit here, slightly different topic, but related. American corporate culture scares the crap out of me, I never fully understood why there is such a presenteeism culture. I mean it exists here and in Europe but not to the same extent and where people are just numbers that are hired and fired so easily without workers rights.
- digisign 5y ago
  This kind of company can't survive long, and aren't very common fortunately. Lots of open positions as well, so no reason to stay either. Mobility is generally a good thing.
- vidarh 5y ago
  Norwegian in London here. This is how the UK looks to me compared to Norway...
  - the_biot 5y ago
    Similar experience here. I've worked for a British company, and I thought the amount of politics and backstabbing was insane.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  That's definitely a cultural thing, and in the US it's generational as well. 50 years ago folks expected to work for a lifetime at the same company, and moving jobs was considered a big red flag. But today? It's more like a gig economy, where you work at a place long enough to finish a project, then reevaluate. As my buddy Bob says, each year his annual review/raise is an 'offer to stay'. He compares it with what he could get elsewhere, and moves if that's the right decision.
Traster 5y ago
It's easy to overcomplicate this. Why work for someone who is an arsehole? Leave! Why are you worrying about good people not applying because of your bad glass door ratings? Do you actually want good peopel to be exposed to your arsehole CEO? Will they make a difference? No. Either you make the judgement you can outlast the CEO, or you should be thinking of your career outside of the company.
- Cullinet 5y ago
  I think, as a observer, one of the best character traits of American culture is the willingness to topple your leaders. We don't often suffer 16 years of a Prime Minister but did 14 of Thatcher and 12 of Blair. Whereas becoming a Two Term President is still a big deal. Unfortunately employment market culture of really far more rapidly changing careers than the foundations of the American industrial economy was used to, hasn't gotten updated on the leadership durability model. Which has been grossly extended by special voting rights and the abandonment of embarrassment for misdemeanour leading to resignation which is almost gone as well as the possible reason why metoo etc was so explosive when we realised that some unacceptable behaviour really is unacceptable. There's more than merely the benefit of the doubt happening here.
  - vba616 5y ago
    >I think, as a observer, one of the best character traits of American culture is the willingness to topple your leaders. We don't often suffer 16 years of a Prime Minister but did 14 of Thatcher and 12 of Blair. Whereas becoming a Two Term President is still a big deal. Far be it from me to spurn a compliment, but as an American, this seems utterly backwards. The best thing in a parliamentary system, that is lacking in the US, is the ability to have a vote of confidence and dissolve the government if necessary - the lack of this seems like the structural core of our government's dysfunction, gridlock, two party polarization, and opposition to the will of the people. Conversely, two terms maximum is just a rule that wasn't always so. If a politician doesn't lose support, why shouldn't they keep running the government? The important thing is that they do lose control whenever they lose support. ...and the American system may have been more lucky than well-designed historically in not becoming victim to what they call an "autogolpe".
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
Sounds like a company I know. We placed one of our Engineer contractors there - all was well. Then he joined the company (perfectly agreeable all around) and instantly started getting shit on by their CEO. Public criticism of everthing he did; outrageous demands on their time; exclusion from company events for fake emergencies; announcements that his department (consisting of exactly one person, him) was under-performing the other department (12 people) at company meetings. So he quit; they panicked; he's now a contractor again with double the pay and reporting to a VP he got along with.
- Cullinet 5y ago
  That particular lousy "leader" bought your company and thought that the performance of your contract engineer all alone in his company could carry on at the level possible with your company's obviously highly effective employees and engineering engagement environmental support systems. At least that explains him being isolated.. .. which actually foreshadows the conclusion of this story and even begs for more... the engineer was employed with expectations of being able to perform like a entire department obviously the CEO didn't grok his valuation mistake and that's why after being a unacceptable ahold for a very actionable sounding amount of really lousy leadership level loosing litigation liability lingering low blows, the CEO was prepared to re-hire at double rate the CEO clearly still believes that the whole department performance deal is possible and merely adjusted his salary and expenses expectations by the minimum I expect he was prepared to pay. I don't think that the fundamental performance potential for this person and that position is actually unfortunately possible. only positive possibility I can think of is using the CEOs presumption to hire a sufficient staff to do the work and end up VP/SVP report to the board up from contract engineer in one job half life. I've seen the similar kind of thing done. I presume your former colleague can hire your company back to buy some thinking time as well. If this is a current situation I hope this is some food for thought.
  - JoeAltmaier 5y ago
    Not sure where all that came from. They simply hired the contract Engineer we were providing. We originally did all their software on the particular product (cockpit display) using four Engineers but when development slowed, they wanted one fulltime and that was our guy. He went from being our employee to being their employee, which is his right. And it spiralled from there. Anyway he's happy independently contracting now, so alls well that ends well.
gethoht 5y ago
Yeah I worked for a dude like this before. He'd come into the office literally in people's faces like screaming at the top of his lungs. He did that to me once and I told him to never talk to me again. If he needs something he can go through my manager. 6 months later the board decided he was too much of a liability and he resigned. He also had several sexual harassment lawsuits against him.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  I'm pretty easy-going but also a 6'5" well-off white male, so I'd have no problem dealing with this sort of behaviour (emotional and/or physical) right before I found the door. I feel really bad with how a woman, minority or someone who really needed the pay cheque would have to deal with this.
  - strikelaserclaw 5y ago
    what does your stature have to do with anything? This is an office settings, all bullying is done verbally, so dealing with this kind of behavior is more about "guts" than physical strength.
    - sshine 5y ago
      Obviously taller people, on average, have longer guts.
      - gumby 5y ago
        Is that true? I thought that a lot of the organs were more often than not about the same size in everyone, so the reason that tall people can appear more willowy and less tall people were more likely to be somewhat barrel shaped was simply that the latter needed to have their organs go someplace. Also that geriatric people tend to lose height as they age while their innards are the same, thus you get a bit of spread as you get old. But I never studied this so this may be some stray memory of something misunderstood.
    - 5y ago
Animats 5y ago
The primary job of the Board of Directors is to fire the CEO when necessary. Looks like it's time.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  The primary job is to stay on the board and leverage relationships and reputation for their own brand.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Maybe, but this CEO is going to be a stain on their reputation.
felizuno 5y ago
While I agree with the advice to leave, this person may be reluctant to leave because their compensation package is not fully vested. There is a famously toxic culture at - uh, you know, a large internet retailer with a prominent web services business - whose primary compensation is/was stock on 2-4 year vesting schedules. I personally know people who had literal heart attacks, mental breakdowns, and other serious and life threatening health consequences that arose as a direct result of staying in that toxic environment too long. It's not worth it. My friend who had a heart attack at 40 would gladly trade back the $750k in stock he got in exchange. Life is short.
robotnikman 5y ago
Reminds me of the CEO of my last company shudders I still had nightmares many months after I left that place.
aerovistae 5y ago
This brings to mind something interesting to me. I have had 5 jobs in software in the past 10 years, and the first four were frustrating in different ways. Frustrating coworkers, bad pay, annoying location, dismal office, no vacation -- all different combinations of problems. My current job, however, at a reasonably well known non-FAANG tech company, is in most ways perfect. I work remotely but have a NYC salary. My coworkers are delightful. The work is stress-free with top-of-the-line work-life balance, flexible PTO and a lot of holidays. I have no complaints. EXCEPT that it's insanely boring. It's just such meaningless, boring work. And that's the quandary. I know how stressful and frustrating most jobs are. I know this job is 90% perfect other than leaving me feeling unfulfilled. I know the odds of finding another job with such a combination of factors is very low. So I stay, even as I see talented engineers moving on as described in the reddit thread and in this one. I'm not staying because I can't get work elsewhere - I'm staying because I don't believe I can find comparably stress-free high-paying work elsewhere.
- xtracto 5y ago
  After having been in 3 very fast growing startups I got completely burnt out. So I got a job like the one you are describing: The pay is basically double of what I was making before, it is absolutely out of all proportion for my home country and the team is amazing. However it is also quite boring as well, I've never been in a "largish" slow phase company. I am enjoying the ride because once this is over, I know I won't be able to get a similar job elsewhere.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  Start a side hustle to scratch your itch? Assuming you mean unfulfilled in a technical sense. Of course you could also mean family and friends, which is outside of work anyway.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
skeeter2020 5y ago
A very large inernational engineering company hires lots of new grads, one of them a former co-worker of mine who described how her boss told her "You're like an orange; we'll squeeze all the juice out of you until there's nothing left but pulp and peel, then you'll quit or we'll throw you away". I guess this could also describe most law firms and management consultancies as well. Is it better or worse when it's systemic and not just an a-hole CEO?
beepbooptheory 5y ago
A wonderful new angle to try for possibly getting some responses in the job search!

159 points by caaqil 5y ago

GTFOASAP

I worked at a company with a comically terrible (criminal) CEO. The year I quit, the company Glassdoor rating went from average to bad due to multiple reviews. Half a year later, after more people quit, I see lots of fake reviews, the worst (accurate) reviews gone, and the rating is back to decent. Apparently, even seemingly good things can be subverted.

zibzab 5y ago

Why are you still there, with the job market being what it is now? I mean, you fairly quickly see where this is going to lead. Why stay in a sinking ship?

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Some folks need some encouraging. Encourage them!

gameswithgo 5y ago

How hard is it for an employee to request a meeting with the board, generally?

onphonenow 5y ago
Why? You take a lot of personal risk when you do end runs to a board for this type of thing. The normal solution is to go out and get a new job -> I've done that with crazy bosses. Very simple. You can even leave on OK terms.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nrmitchi 5y ago
You'd really have to have a lot to lose (in comparison to just taking a new job) under the current company in order to take that chance (think a large value of options, etc). You'd have better luck if you already had some sort of existing relationship with the board, but that doesn't really apply if you're asking this question.
ipnon 5y ago
You do not want to stand out at these companies. From experience, you will get fired. Morale is at rock bottom, no one is working hard, the only benefit is that expectations are near the limit of nothing so long as you do even the most miniscule actions of value. Working at Hell Corporation with CEO Satan is incredibly depressing. The reason people don't leave is that interviewers can smell the desperation and downtroddenness. This is coupled with not having written anything except muddy meatballs on top of spaghetti code for your tenure. Evil CEOs are a feature in these companies. They crush the souls of their workers to prevent them from being able to leave. It usually works long enough for the founders to sell their stakes to a witless VC before the whole operation explodes in a ball of fire.
- paxys 5y ago
  Getting fired (with a severance package/unemployment benefits) may be preferable to voluntarily quitting out of frustration and getting nothing.
- bagels 5y ago
  If you are on your way out already, the calculus changes a little.
axg11 5y ago
Very difficult, and frankly pointless. I have seen employees take problems to the board in the past _if_ they already have a working relationship with board members. Otherwise, you are signalling yourself as an employee that cannot successfully work with the company's management. At best, the board will take actions based on your advice, but you will still compromise your own position within the company. The calculus is simple: in many startups the CEO owns 10-60% of the company. A very senior early employee who negotiated well on options/equity? Optimally <0.5%.
flybrand 5y ago
The board will say “yes” in their response cc’ing the leadership.
dreamcompiler 5y ago
I've been in this situation and fortunately I came to my senses. The board hired a sociopathic CEO who was running the company into the ground and driving away all the good engineers. I came up with a concrete and inexpensive plan for turning the company around which I thought had about a 50/50 chance of making the company so successful it would own its market, which was brand new at the time. It was largely simple stuff like not making the same dumb mistakes over and over. I thought about taking the plan to the board, and then I realized: A. The board members talk to the CEO every day, but I've never even met most of them. Who do I think they're going to listen to? B. Everybody on the board is rich. If those guys lose $50 million they shrug their shoulders, sail to Bermuda for a month of R&R, and get right back on the investing horse. C. I owe the board members nothing. NOTHING. I was hired as a staff engineer, not as a turnaround expert for a failing company. D. The most likely outcome of me talking to the board is me getting fired and nothing else changing. In fact that's the only realistic possible outcome. So I quit. And immediately got a better job. The company continued declining and eventually fired the sociopath CEO but by that time a better company had come along that now owns that market. You can't fix stupid. All you can do is leave.

xtracto 5y ago

Ha reminds me of a previous company I worked at. The amount of exec and employee turnover was horrible. Yet the CEO and company have good ratings on Glassdoor. And the CEO sincerely believes that such turnover is a feature.

serverlessmom 5y ago

Wow this is horrifying. It's time to abandon the ship and take your very valuable skills someplace they will be appreciated. In my experience with people like the CEO described here they are usually people whom are unable to engage in self reflection, but somehow delivering that rating to the CEO to see how miserable his rating is may be a much needed wake up call.

snorkel 5y ago

Whole situation sounds like typical startup growing pains and this is the OPs first rodeo of this kind. The original crew of developers was happy during the early days when it was all cozy and limitless upside, but now there's new funding, new bosses, new managers, new processes, new rules, new coworkers that "don't get it" and that old fun and cozy vibe is lost. The new CEO will likely be fired by the board too, but face it, the cozy days are over. So either find yourself a role in that circus that you like, or quit.

burkaman 5y ago
This is absolutely not normal. If you find yourself relating to this post, please start looking for a new job immediately, I promise it's not like this everywhere.
- bduerst 5y ago
  Yeah, this feels like a no-true-scotsman, except for 'startups', made to discredit OP's reality. Telling OP to ignore the writing on the wall and show loyalty to a toxic leader is not good advice.
- gruez 5y ago
  >This is absolutely not normal. Is it "normal" for a company to stay "cozy and limitless upside" even as it grows to hundreds of employees? >If you find yourself relating to this post, please start looking for a new job immediately The parent post literally mentions quitting as one option.
  - burkaman 5y ago
    > Is it "normal" for a company to stay "cozy and limitless upside" even as it grows to hundreds of employees? No it isn't, but that's not relevant to this discussion. Nobody made any claim of limitless upside. > The parent post literally mentions quitting as one option. Yes, but it implied you're likely to find the same thing anywhere that's not a super early stage startup, which is not true.
5y ago

faeyanpiraat 5y ago

The "dead sea effect" is an interesting new concept I learned from that post.

ubermonkey 5y ago
Yeah, me too. I worked at a place in the 90s that was absolutely going in that direction, but I had no word for the phenomenon. They were an all Vax/VMS shop in the mid-90s, and they paid developers criminally low wages even for the era. I was hired in an analyst/project management role at a considerably higher salary, which of course made my group unpopular with the dev rank and file. Turnover was insane -- like, 40% a year in the dev & IT department. Those that stayed were, generally speaking, those that either couldn't conceive of seeking another job, or were unable to do so. This is not a recipe for a functional or high-achieving group even without that by-that-point religious adherence to the party line on (a) the long-term viability of VMS and Digital generally or (b) the wisdom of insisting that damn near everything be built from scratch, even the database system.
- WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
  > the wisdom of insisting that damn near everything be built from scratch, even the database system. NIH is literally software cancer. We've done it dozens of times and it hasn't worked once...
  - ubermonkey 5y ago
    It also drives the Dead Sea thing, because to do anything effective in such an environment you have to learn all sorts of esoteric and only-useful-here tech (sometimes even languages!), which takes time you could be using to learn marketable skills.
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
It's what I think Amazon/AWS is going through now. When they were in "fun growth" mode their obnoxious Bezosisms didn't really matter, but they are settling into an enterprise/utility/long term company. Their raising the bar and stack ranking and forced attrition and blame culture and backstabbing and sacrificial hires won't work. Instead, they produce a dead sea effect where you aren't getting good people, you're either getting sociopaths or people that don't have options to go elsewhere and not be organizationally abused. Because if you're good, you can go elsewhere. Other FAANG, etc. Did you see all the outages in AWS in December? Utilities have long-standing employees because they do long-term support and know the systems. Amazon's hiring does not reward or structure itself that way. It's for churning people. If you get a creepy impression from the hiring (and Amazon hiring should DEFINITELY do that)... well... I would say most people that go there are doing it for the resume and they are out within two years. The people I knew who went there were exactly that. Then they cashed out to better jobs.

manuelabeledo 5y ago

> The company’s solution was to mass hire to make up for the losses. Yeah, this company is in life support, then. There is this other company where there are a handful of the shittiest managers I have ever heard of in my whole career. As a result, most key engineers are leaving, and the company is ramping up hires. They don't seem to understand that it doesn't matter how many more people you hire, if all the know-how and leadership has vanished already.

exdsq 5y ago
> if all the know-how and leadership has vanished already. The final nail in the coffin after this happening is a software rewrite by the bad quality hired because A) maintaining and extending software is hard 2) it's even harder without any original engineers around to guide designs 3) it's easy to blame people who aren't there for your issues so "the existing software sucks". I've seen this happen a few times.

trentnix 5y ago

My first thought reading this is that I'm happy Glassdoor is actually having an impact. 15 months ago I started work as a Software Manager at a large arts and crafts retailer. Much of the job seemed completely in line with my interest and what I wanted to do, but two weeks in I figured out the place was clownishly toxic and the CTO, despite an impressive educational background, had a cartoonish understanding of how software is made. So I resigned and sought new opportunities. I've never worked less than 18 months at any job, and that made leaving a tough pill to swallow. Looking at the reviews on Glassdoor (and TeamBlind) left since my departure, I can see my intuitions were spot on. Reviewers' descriptions of the environment seem absurd, but unfortunately they are completely consistent with what my spider-sense was telling me. I hope Glassdoor has helped others avoid the misery of employment there.

georgeecollins 5y ago
I feel like savvy companies can game Glassdoor. Like reviews online, it may be useful to learn what to look for but not so useful as an overall raring.
- rchaud 5y ago
  Glassdoor is like Yelp, bad reviews can be scrubbed for a price. Companies like these may have a noble mission at the start, but housing people's reviews isnt' profitable. Acting as a PR firm however, is.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    Feels like it wouldn't be too hard to make a simple review site on IPFS. Have a client based filter for spam - but then the filter can be confirmed by every client by visiting the blacklisted reviews. Honestly might be a fun weekend project...
    - dwaltrip 5y ago
      What happens when fake reviews come pouring in?

aynsof 5y ago

I'm stunned at the board's complete lack of awareness. I would have hoped that any competent board member would want to view metrics around retention and morale, and that large shifts would be something they'd dig into.

amriksohata 5y ago

Brit here, slightly different topic, but related. American corporate culture scares the crap out of me, I never fully understood why there is such a presenteeism culture. I mean it exists here and in Europe but not to the same extent and where people are just numbers that are hired and fired so easily without workers rights.

digisign 5y ago
This kind of company can't survive long, and aren't very common fortunately. Lots of open positions as well, so no reason to stay either. Mobility is generally a good thing.
vidarh 5y ago
Norwegian in London here. This is how the UK looks to me compared to Norway...
- the_biot 5y ago
  Similar experience here. I've worked for a British company, and I thought the amount of politics and backstabbing was insane.
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
That's definitely a cultural thing, and in the US it's generational as well. 50 years ago folks expected to work for a lifetime at the same company, and moving jobs was considered a big red flag. But today? It's more like a gig economy, where you work at a place long enough to finish a project, then reevaluate. As my buddy Bob says, each year his annual review/raise is an 'offer to stay'. He compares it with what he could get elsewhere, and moves if that's the right decision.

Traster 5y ago

It's easy to overcomplicate this. Why work for someone who is an arsehole? Leave! Why are you worrying about good people not applying because of your bad glass door ratings? Do you actually want good peopel to be exposed to your arsehole CEO? Will they make a difference? No. Either you make the judgement you can outlast the CEO, or you should be thinking of your career outside of the company.

Cullinet 5y ago
I think, as a observer, one of the best character traits of American culture is the willingness to topple your leaders. We don't often suffer 16 years of a Prime Minister but did 14 of Thatcher and 12 of Blair. Whereas becoming a Two Term President is still a big deal. Unfortunately employment market culture of really far more rapidly changing careers than the foundations of the American industrial economy was used to, hasn't gotten updated on the leadership durability model. Which has been grossly extended by special voting rights and the abandonment of embarrassment for misdemeanour leading to resignation which is almost gone as well as the possible reason why metoo etc was so explosive when we realised that some unacceptable behaviour really is unacceptable. There's more than merely the benefit of the doubt happening here.
- vba616 5y ago
  >I think, as a observer, one of the best character traits of American culture is the willingness to topple your leaders. We don't often suffer 16 years of a Prime Minister but did 14 of Thatcher and 12 of Blair. Whereas becoming a Two Term President is still a big deal. Far be it from me to spurn a compliment, but as an American, this seems utterly backwards. The best thing in a parliamentary system, that is lacking in the US, is the ability to have a vote of confidence and dissolve the government if necessary - the lack of this seems like the structural core of our government's dysfunction, gridlock, two party polarization, and opposition to the will of the people. Conversely, two terms maximum is just a rule that wasn't always so. If a politician doesn't lose support, why shouldn't they keep running the government? The important thing is that they do lose control whenever they lose support. ...and the American system may have been more lucky than well-designed historically in not becoming victim to what they call an "autogolpe".

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

Sounds like a company I know. We placed one of our Engineer contractors there - all was well. Then he joined the company (perfectly agreeable all around) and instantly started getting shit on by their CEO. Public criticism of everthing he did; outrageous demands on their time; exclusion from company events for fake emergencies; announcements that his department (consisting of exactly one person, him) was under-performing the other department (12 people) at company meetings. So he quit; they panicked; he's now a contractor again with double the pay and reporting to a VP he got along with.

Cullinet 5y ago
That particular lousy "leader" bought your company and thought that the performance of your contract engineer all alone in his company could carry on at the level possible with your company's obviously highly effective employees and engineering engagement environmental support systems. At least that explains him being isolated.. .. which actually foreshadows the conclusion of this story and even begs for more... the engineer was employed with expectations of being able to perform like a entire department obviously the CEO didn't grok his valuation mistake and that's why after being a unacceptable ahold for a very actionable sounding amount of really lousy leadership level loosing litigation liability lingering low blows, the CEO was prepared to re-hire at double rate the CEO clearly still believes that the whole department performance deal is possible and merely adjusted his salary and expenses expectations by the minimum I expect he was prepared to pay. I don't think that the fundamental performance potential for this person and that position is actually unfortunately possible. only positive possibility I can think of is using the CEOs presumption to hire a sufficient staff to do the work and end up VP/SVP report to the board up from contract engineer in one job half life. I've seen the similar kind of thing done. I presume your former colleague can hire your company back to buy some thinking time as well. If this is a current situation I hope this is some food for thought.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  Not sure where all that came from. They simply hired the contract Engineer we were providing. We originally did all their software on the particular product (cockpit display) using four Engineers but when development slowed, they wanted one fulltime and that was our guy. He went from being our employee to being their employee, which is his right. And it spiralled from there. Anyway he's happy independently contracting now, so alls well that ends well.

gethoht 5y ago

Yeah I worked for a dude like this before. He'd come into the office literally in people's faces like screaming at the top of his lungs. He did that to me once and I told him to never talk to me again. If he needs something he can go through my manager. 6 months later the board decided he was too much of a liability and he resigned. He also had several sexual harassment lawsuits against him.

skeeter2020 5y ago
I'm pretty easy-going but also a 6'5" well-off white male, so I'd have no problem dealing with this sort of behaviour (emotional and/or physical) right before I found the door. I feel really bad with how a woman, minority or someone who really needed the pay cheque would have to deal with this.
- strikelaserclaw 5y ago
  what does your stature have to do with anything? This is an office settings, all bullying is done verbally, so dealing with this kind of behavior is more about "guts" than physical strength.
  - sshine 5y ago
    Obviously taller people, on average, have longer guts.
    - gumby 5y ago
      Is that true? I thought that a lot of the organs were more often than not about the same size in everyone, so the reason that tall people can appear more willowy and less tall people were more likely to be somewhat barrel shaped was simply that the latter needed to have their organs go someplace. Also that geriatric people tend to lose height as they age while their innards are the same, thus you get a bit of spread as you get old. But I never studied this so this may be some stray memory of something misunderstood.
  - 5y ago

Animats 5y ago

The primary job of the Board of Directors is to fire the CEO when necessary. Looks like it's time.

ipaddr 5y ago
The primary job is to stay on the board and leverage relationships and reputation for their own brand.
- klyrs 5y ago
  Maybe, but this CEO is going to be a stain on their reputation.

felizuno 5y ago

While I agree with the advice to leave, this person may be reluctant to leave because their compensation package is not fully vested. There is a famously toxic culture at - uh, you know, a large internet retailer with a prominent web services business - whose primary compensation is/was stock on 2-4 year vesting schedules. I personally know people who had literal heart attacks, mental breakdowns, and other serious and life threatening health consequences that arose as a direct result of staying in that toxic environment too long. It's not worth it. My friend who had a heart attack at 40 would gladly trade back the $750k in stock he got in exchange. Life is short.

robotnikman 5y ago

Reminds me of the CEO of my last company shudders I still had nightmares many months after I left that place.

aerovistae 5y ago

This brings to mind something interesting to me. I have had 5 jobs in software in the past 10 years, and the first four were frustrating in different ways. Frustrating coworkers, bad pay, annoying location, dismal office, no vacation -- all different combinations of problems. My current job, however, at a reasonably well known non-FAANG tech company, is in most ways perfect. I work remotely but have a NYC salary. My coworkers are delightful. The work is stress-free with top-of-the-line work-life balance, flexible PTO and a lot of holidays. I have no complaints. EXCEPT that it's insanely boring. It's just such meaningless, boring work. And that's the quandary. I know how stressful and frustrating most jobs are. I know this job is 90% perfect other than leaving me feeling unfulfilled. I know the odds of finding another job with such a combination of factors is very low. So I stay, even as I see talented engineers moving on as described in the reddit thread and in this one. I'm not staying because I can't get work elsewhere - I'm staying because I don't believe I can find comparably stress-free high-paying work elsewhere.

xtracto 5y ago
After having been in 3 very fast growing startups I got completely burnt out. So I got a job like the one you are describing: The pay is basically double of what I was making before, it is absolutely out of all proportion for my home country and the team is amazing. However it is also quite boring as well, I've never been in a "largish" slow phase company. I am enjoying the ride because once this is over, I know I won't be able to get a similar job elsewhere.
lordnacho 5y ago
Start a side hustle to scratch your itch? Assuming you mean unfulfilled in a technical sense. Of course you could also mean family and friends, which is outside of work anyway.

deleted 5y ago

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skeeter2020 5y ago

A very large inernational engineering company hires lots of new grads, one of them a former co-worker of mine who described how her boss told her "You're like an orange; we'll squeeze all the juice out of you until there's nothing left but pulp and peel, then you'll quit or we'll throw you away". I guess this could also describe most law firms and management consultancies as well. Is it better or worse when it's systemic and not just an a-hole CEO?

beepbooptheory 5y ago

A wonderful new angle to try for possibly getting some responses in the job search!