A.Constant layoffs blamed on employees
- Literally every month, reports are published showing employees laid off for “poor performance,” sometimes 20+ people at once.
- Many of those laid off are strong developers, seniors, or even team leads, some of whom were publicly praised on company blogs or podcast just months earlier.
- Layoffs are often caused by a lack of projects or financial issues, yet the blame is placed entirely on employees.
- Employees are laid off without warning, sometimes with a single message, and are given no chance to defend themselves or clarify their performance.
B. Chronic poor management and instability
- Despite continuous growth in the eCommerce industry, the company struggles financially year after year, repeatedly cutting costs while blaming the global market instead of acknowledging poor internal management.
Projects are often mishandled due to:
- Poor resource management and usage.
- Over-reliance on junior developers.
- Weak requirement gathering.
- Poor time planning.
- Inadequate technical exploration.
- Many projects become unprofitable after months or even a year of work, showing a lack of strategic planning.
- Layoffs happen every month and are always justified as “poor performance,” which raises serious questions when employees with 1–3+ years of service in the company are repeatedly labeled as underperformers.
- Management has openly asked employees for ideas on how to make fixed-price projects profitable because leadership itself cannot finish them on time, which is concerning, given that this is management’s responsibility.
- Junior developers are frequently sold to Magento clients as seniors.
C. No real growth path – just “vibe coding.”
- There is no structured career growth path for developers.
- Task estimates were suddenly reduced to about 25% of their original size, and developers are forced to rely on tools like Cursor/MCP.
- Junior developers often do not understand the code at all and simply copy generated pull requests without learning.
- While AI tools can help speed things up, the extremely limited estimates leave no time to understand the codebase or underlying concepts.
- The tech stack is extremely narrow — around 95% Magento — offering little opportunity to gain broader experience.
D. Salary growth and HR limitations
- Many employees (including myself) were promised salary increases after achieving certain goals or changing roles, only for the narrative to change once those goals were met.
- Salary reviews are not based on past performance. Instead, new goals are continuously added, splitting increases into “first half” and “second half.”
By the time goals are achieved, a year has passed, and raises are paused due to “company financial instability.”
- HR repeatedly states that raises were refused by the Owner and that they “can’t do anything.”
- Salary Increase freezes are very common, and getting a raise is extremely rare , almost impossible.
E. High level of centralized decision-making
- The owner and unofficial CEO micromanages every department — HR, account management, and development.
- All major decisions ultimately depend on him, and communication is often dismissive or disrespectful, especially via email.
- He plays a direct role in layoffs, rather than PMs or account managers.
- Employees frequently get videos where he talks about non-actionable visions, personal struggles building the company, or vague ideas with no clear direction.
F. Disrespectful treatment of global employees
- Global employees are often treated with a lack of respect and consideration, creating a strong feeling of inequality.
- Sick leave days were suddenly removed under the excuse of “ISO standards,” with management claiming global employees could get compensation from their home countries.
After many employees explained that this compensation does not exist, the owner responded dismissively with “Okkkay.”
- Management later stated they could have increased paid vacation instead, but chose not to.
- International public holidays were limited to only 10 days, supposedly to “match Latvia,” even though Latvia itself has more than 10 holidays. When this was pointed out, the response was that “in the future Latvia might have only 9 holidays,” which felt sarcastic and unprofessional.
