Vantaggi
- Amazing product ideas and opportunities for a company that started the category that now is a market that's growing a incredible rate. - Strong pedigree of brand, customer service, and category building product ideas to build off of and get back into a leadership position in the space. - Solve some of the internal problems and I really think the brand can get back in the driver's seat of the category, which means success and career growth in a company that historically rewards successes and promotes high performers really well. - Really passionate team members who love the brand and product, are (mostly) great to work with. Some of my best friends are coworkers and most are still sticking around despite our challenges! - Strong history of social impact programs (which have slowed down a bit due to financial problems), humanitarian work is a core part of the culture and business from its founding and I expect it to stay that way.
Svantaggi
- Challenging to actually deliver on any successful results in a competitive market, particularly because it's a very under-resourced business competing with massive companies, demanding extreme creativity, performance, and sheer amount of time from its employees to try to close that gap. - Meanwhile, very oppressive environment due to a workaholic GM (pretty sure his office location is purposely picked so he can watch who comes and leaves when) who doesn't have any trust in most of his managers or departments, and controls and micromanages every aspect of the business through meetings, during which he oscillates between ignoring the conversation and yelling/cussing at people for not working hard enough or making wrong decisions (from his viewpoint). Many of the senior and middle management are great, but they're somewhat useless because they spend half their time doing damage control and the other half trying to adjust to a constantly changing stream of direction from leadership, instead of working on the (very real) problems and challenges for the brand in their market. Subject matter experts spend all their time trying to figure out what leadership wants and then how to robotically implement it without getting chewed out, instead of creatively problem solving. It's always been this way since I've been here, but it seems to be getting worse and worse since COVID and with the more competitive market. - Unhealthy relationship with parent company, where shared services (IT, HR policies) make day to day work really difficult while the business leadership are completely unaware of the cultural and strategy challenges (or are aware and don't care?) All in all, I've gone from loving my work and the company to having legit panic attacks most mornings as I'm driving in, and I know I'm not alone. Only people who don't feel this way have either completely checked out/don't care or are far removed from/don't interact with business issues and leadership for some reason.
