Lightspeed reviews

I've been meaning to review the company for quite a long time, as I've seen my fair share of good and bad in the amount of time I've been working there. However, every time I want to leave a review, the mains problems I want to talk about eventually just get eclipsed by a new wave of different problems, and my review feels off. Eventually, I managed to take a step back and realize that these were always the same problem, with a nice fresh coat of paint. Every company goes through growth-related issues, it's just part of the game. Sometimes with strong leadership and vision, you can manage to land back on your feet very quickly and make it a learning experience. At Lightspeed though, we deliberately chose to constantly rotate between the same exact problems in some sort of perverted cycle, and I can tell you, we learn nothing but frustration from it. Let me preface this by saying that leadership (in general) at Lightspeed is weak. At any level of leadership, people fall into three categories: definitely not fit for the job, a decent fit for the job but completely overwhelmed and taken advantage of, and a perfect fit for the job, which eventually makes you leave, because you can see all the glaring issues exposed bare and you are powerless to solve anything. A lot of people in a leadership position at Lightspeed are definitely not fit for their job. There are a lot of imposters and purely political players who are only interested in looking good and maximizing how many people they manage in order to jump to their next opportunity like their own little traveling locust plague. We had a wave of these people coming from Shutterstock before, today it's SSENSE. They show up, befriend powerful people, do very little to earn their promotions, surf on their own direct reports' successes, and eventually, get promoted to their maximum level of incompetence (the Peter principle, anyone?). When their situation becomes too much to bear and they can't fake it anymore, they just bail to their next target company and leave a complete mess behind them that takes months or years to fix. But who cares? They got stock options, they got a cushy salary and they can brag to their next employer about all the things they didn't really do. On the other hand, some people are not entirely fit for leadership positions but are still doing their darndest to earn the respect of others. In order to prove themselves, they put in the extra work to be recognized and in doing so, not only contribute to the ascension in power of more dastardly people (as evoked just before) but completely burn themselves to the ground in the process. It's no secret that mental fatigue, burnouts, and extremely poor work/life balance are pervasive at Lightspeed, everyone here knows someone that went through some form of it. Eventually though, these people regularly get overshadowed by more politically skilled employees who manage to steal their thunder, which leads to them either becoming shells of their former selves or pushed aside to less interesting projects or positions. In the end, they either stay and do their 9-5 every day without passion or just leave. And then, you have the superstars, we have very few of these at Lightspeed, strong competent leaders that outshine everyone else. Unfortunately, these people are so few and far between that their hands are basically tied. I've been in this company long enough to have seen plenty of these come in full of hope, and give up usually after just a few months on the job once they realize the number of political games they have to play and the hoops they have to jump through just to do the work they've been hired for. Most of these people leave before their one-year anniversary, sometimes even because they are actively targetted and undermined by incompetents who want to keep their cushy positions. Eventually, what you are left with as an employee is a constant turn-around of managers, directors, and VPs. They all rank somewhere on that scale, and they all eventually give up or leave after what feels like 6 to 18 months on the job. The result? An ever-changing leadership roster, which leads to an ever-changing product roadmap that swerves from right to left every six months, punctuated by non-stop reorganizations to suit whatever vision of the week. I think I've gone through five or six department-wide reorganizations in the last four to five years. You will see leaders constantly pushing for the same solutions to the same problems and failing for the same reasons as before, usually because they leave long before their plans can be put to fruition or because they couldn't care less about what had already been attempted before. As an engineer, you will see a constant re-inventing of the wheel because there are basically no technical figures of authority that have been here long enough to be able to assume the role, or they just gave up trying a long time ago. As an employee, you will witness the absence of any sense of career progression as you constantly have to reprove yourself to a fresh batch of ever-changing managers and directors that all inevitably hire their own cronies when they come in and couldn't care less about you as a result. I've heard of people that went through more than 10 managers over the last three to four years. That's roughly a new manager every four months! You're going to tell me: "Ain't that describing all companies really?" and I'll answer you that yes, it does. But if it was an Olympic sport, Lightspeed would be a triple gold medallist. Working at Lightspeed, especially in the product and technology department, is exhausting, and no amount of internal transfers can solve anything as the problem is rampant in the entire department. This is the first company in my 15 years career that ever managed to beat my passion and drive to a pulp and made me one of these 9-to-5 employees that couldn't care less about the business as long as I get my paycheque. And I hate every second of it.