Mission-Driven Company Working to Electrify Homes - Recensione dipendente - Dipendente anonimo presso SPAN

I've been at SPAN for more than 6 years: from the early days of a dozen employees and not a single product installed through to today's growing global team with products installed in every state. To me, SPAN was, and is, a place where you can (and are expected to) make a difference. Whether you're an intern or a VP, come with an open mind to your role expanding or evolving along with the business. It obviously hasn't been a smooth or easy ride: there's been peaks and dips along the way but the vision and impact of what SPAN is doing for electrification and grid management is more apparent day-by-day. The (majority of the!) people I get to work with everyday are extremely capable, motivated and driven by the same values and mission. Certainly the business, the building, the people and product have changed a lot over the years but I see that evolution as an expected part of any startup's growth. SPAN is a place where you are _required_ to have an impact - that's what continues to drive me and I hope that's why you'll apply as well!

If you want to sit back, coast and earn big tech money for doing nothing of enormous relevance whilst collecting a generous salary, this isn't the place. The hours can be long; the roadmap and priorities can switch without much notice and we have a long way to go in terms of organizational communication efficiency. That's part of the challenge of any growing startup and should not come as a shock anyone applying. What's important is that there's an awareness of the current issues and a plan to address them with key hires, a plan (and people) to revamp the collaborative and supportive culture of the early days and a promising outlook for the future of the technology. Personally - I believe all those things are opportunities and not a reason to work elsewhere.

Product has an actual shot at accelerating electrification and therefore reduce gas emissions overall. Some really talented folks (though not more than 20% of the headcount, sadly).

There are many cons of working at SPAN. Leadership is weak (if we can call that leadership). They cannot make a decision to save their lives. When they do, they tend to revisit that decision 10 times creating a never ending whiplash effect downstream. Key leaders have never been in such roles - and it shows. CEO has the right mindset to go from 0 to 1 - and is great at raising money (which he should focus on); but he unfortunately cannot execute or drive the organization to execute at scale. That would be acceptable if the COO could actually drive the execution: but he doesn't (or can't). Behind closed doors, CEO has actually no respect or consideration for people. He sees them as pieces of a puzzle that he can move around at will without ever thinking about the impact to the broader organization, or to people's career development / actual compatibility (both skill & personal). That is how you end up with VPs running disciplines they have no clue about. There is no Product Leadership: whatever a customer or prospect will say they need - becomes an immediate "sprint" to implement without any research or planning. This leads to unreasonable/impossible schedules and milestones for an understaffed team to execute on. Nobody says anything as voicing the concern is seen as negative. Programs inevitably fail and the Exec team's response is to re-shuffle the "pieces of the puzzle" without ever looking at themselves in the mirror. When the impossible/unreasonable plans end up failing: the leadership - CEO first - pivots to the blaming game rather than offering actual solutions to unblock the situation (which is largely due to their poor planning and decisions). Whenever recommendations of improvements are shared with Management: they are ignored and received with "we are a startup" type of excuses, while SPAN is 8 years old venture, in its 3rd generation product. Executive team thinks they know best - and as a result do not create an environment of empowerment and enablement for the Managers and ICs at SPAN. As a result: decisions always need CEO inputs; while on the other end, very qualified people end up doing intern/grad school level work while the VPs and Execs hang out continuing to make poorer and poorer decisions, behind closed doors. A suspiciously glowing review mentioned that SPAN is not the place to coast: I'd argue that it is exactly the best place to coast. 70% of the company spends very little time on revenue generating activities. A small but mightly 20-30% carries the weight (until they decide to leave) and the rest will continue to be clocking in and out without much accountability "until the next reorg". If you're looking for "great vibes" and a collaborative atmosphere: you should run. SPAN offices is zombieland with not much to see. That is when > 20 people do show up to the office; which is a rare occurrence.