Vantaggi
-Fun Coworkers -Free Snacks, Meals and Beer:30 -Opportunity to Build a Really Great Product -Nice Location in NLR I’ll start off by saying when I was hired at First Orion, it felt like a lifeline. Before FO, I was at one of the lowest points in my life career-wise and was extremely unhappy at my job. I worked a very strict, corporate job before FO, and when I got hired in 2022 it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I really enjoyed my first 6 - 12 months at First Orion. My team was amazing and the people were very nice. Everyone worked very hard and was extremely good at what they did, but there was also a laid back, chill vibe to the entire business. I also truly enjoyed my work, and probably would have continued working there for quite some time if my position had not been affected by the March layoffs, which eliminated about 20% of the workforce.
Svantaggi
-Poor Leadership -Lack of Career Advancement Opportunities -Negative Future Growth Outlook -Lack of Respect, or Simply No Understanding, of the Importance of Certain Key Roles Everything I loved about the company took a hard 180 somewhere around December 2022/January 2023 as the company found itself in a bad place financially. Some of that was due to overhiring to meet projected growth that never manifested, much of it was because of poor financial planning and growth projections by leadership. But many of the promises that I was offered as a new hire were stripped away or I found out were flat out not true (end-of-year bonuses “we’ve never not given a bonus at the end of the year,” the confusing way stock options were explained to me, being brought on as a hybrid employee but was made to feel bad when I decided to work from home a couple days a week, etc). There was also a lack of career progression opportunities in my department. It seemed like other teams had a much better grasp of it than our team did, and despite coming in with many years of experience, I was treated like an entry-level employee. I asked leadership many times what I needed to do to get a raise, a better title, and clear career trajectory information, but I was never given a straightforward answer. Possibly, it’s because my department only bled talent rather than promoting the excellent people who were already there. There’s clearly a reason that many of the most experienced people on the team left to pursue better opportunities elsewhere or pivoted to other teams within the company. My team was affected by multiple layoffs, each time eliminating key team members. And every time a layoff happened, leadership expected the team to keep performing at the same level -- or better -- with fewer people. These layoffs were the last straw for me and my perception of how FO thinks about its employees. “People First” felt like more of a marketing scheme than a deeply held belief by the company. I have a hard time believing First Orion will survive another 6 - 12 months. The only future I see is either acquisition or bankruptcy. I just hope all the amazing people I worked with find something new and better before the ship fully sinks.
