Vantaggi
Ancestry grew to become an 1 billon dollar revenue company with its product and customer focus. The business still has a lot of potential to grow to the next level with its richness of family history and DNA data.
Svantaggi
- Despite the consistent and gradual growth of the business over the last 10 years, all the leaders who have built the company from ground up including the CEO either got pushed out or demoted - The engineering leaders in AncestryDNA who are obsequiously overreacting to the new company's direction by careless layoffs and re-orgs are driving away the talented people - Some leaders put their personal agenda before the company. For example, the offshore team expansion is more important than producing high quality products, work efficiency and employee morale. - The level of incompetence demonstrated by the engineering leaders in AncestryDNA has been overwhelming in executing the recent layoffs and handling its negative ramification. They laid off some of the top performers without consulting with their direct managers and handled the questions raised during the all hands meeting very poorly. - Micromanagement caused by incompetent leaders and many layers in management. - There is bi-weekly rat race but no long term product roadmaps - A lot of new leaders have been hired from e-commerce companies and they don't seem to have any product visions for Ancestry