Control freak leadership that suffocates and drains employees - Recensione dipendente - Softwaere Engineer presso Screencastify

The CS team has been great so far. A good amount of us are new, but we have been making tons of progress and learning a lot. When a few of us were hired, it was right around the start of renewal season, so it was fast and felt a little over whleming, but our leadership team was extremely supportive. Our team genuinely gets along and support each other.

Fast paced, sometimes communications get lost due to how fast, but our director and VP do a good job of informing us.

The only good thing about this company was the people who worked here and at this point, most of them have all left because of the toxic culture.

The CEO micromanages every person and project to feed his need for control, despite having no real understanding of the edtech landscape or how schools operate. He lacks empathy and makes impulsive decisions without data or rationale. Employee well-being is not a priority. ICs are treated as dispensable. Turnover is high across the board: ICs are leaving in droves, and even leadership has begun to exit due to the unhealthy work environment. As more employees left, remaining staff were expected to take on more work with no additional compensation. Benefits were continually stripped away, and morale continued to decline. The CEO consistently over-promises and under-delivers to customers to chase revenue, regardless of the damage it causes to relationships or long-term trust. I witnessed this firsthand. It’s demoralizing for both employees and customers. Leadership openly gossips about individual contributors and speaks unprofessionally about team members. The culture is toxic, lacking in respect, transparency, and integrity. The CEO is also deeply hypocritical. He insists on hiring only in the Chicagoland area to mandate three days a week in-office, while at the same time outsourcing work overseas for cheap labor rather than backfilling roles. It’s clear the in-office policy isn’t about collaboration, it’s about control. Finally, there is no strategic direction. We’ve pivoted multiple times—from focusing on education, to corporate, back to education, and now trying to rebuild corporate momentum again—all under the erratic leadership of the CEO. It’s chaos, and the company is spiraling as a result. Cannot recommend enough to avoid this company at all costs.