TL; DR:
1. The company functions like a chaotic startup, not a 10+ year old company. Processes and organization should be much farther along by now.
2. Prepare yourself to spend more time talking about how to do something (and why it should be done) than actually doing it.
3. An unshakeable feeling of nepotism at the top, which another reviewer mentioned. Example: the CEO has a few handpicked people with job titles that sound made up. Nobody seems to know what some of them do for the company.
4. The company‘s reporting structure is driven by popularity and optics. You’ll probably report to someone who’s “nice” but has little time or experience to actually help you.
As other reviews have said, if you know what you’re doing, you’re in for a ton of frustration getting anything done.
The company has a weird “agreement culture” which fences in anyone who’s trying to do their actual job. It’s ironically the most repressive form of decision making I have ever seen.
“Agreement” lets anyone at the company not only weigh in on but obstruct whatever you’re working on as they see fit. It doesn’t matter whether or not they work on your team, or if they even have any knowledge or experience in that area. It’s impossible to keep momentum on a project because of the constant holdups, interruptions, and useless back-and-forth. Even after that, there’s often last-minute chaos and panic because a latecomer suddenly doesn’t “agree” with what you’re doing. And you’re stuck doing everything all over again. And again. And again.
Most of the company knows that agreement culture doesn’t work. Having an idea “survive agreement” is a running joke, presumably because of the company’s growing graveyard of great ideas that never make the cut. Agreement culture gets raised as a problem again and again in company meetings, which the CEO waves off as some widespread lack of understanding or enlightenment. It’s an odd move for someone currently plugging his book on how leaders need to listen to their people more.
I can only guess the CEO is either trying to convince himself that agreement culture isn’t the terrible idea everyone says it is, or is happy running the company as a two-class system. I say this because despite agreement culture being a “core value”, the leadership team is notorious for skipping the process in favour of uninformed action. They hire brilliant people not to lead, but to blindly execute on half-baked ideas or clean up the aftermath of bad decisions. I get that leadership sometimes needs to act quickly, but I’ve never worked at a company whose core values are so heavily conditional and negotiable.
By far though, the most toxic side effect of agreement culture is the number of meetings it creates — good luck if you enjoy being productive. I was often stuck in meetings for upwards of 20 hours per week, while still expected to produce full-time level work on top of that. Even my teammates admitted to me that they frequently have to work until midnight just to get things done.
As of when I left, nothing was being done about it other than leadership constantly “re-educating” people on the “benefits” of agreement culture. The problem‘s only getting worse, and I don’t have much hope that’ll change.
I love the people I worked with, which is why it makes me sad that leadership, for all their warm and fuzzy platitudes, is ultimately failing them. There’s no sense of direction, strategy, or accountability at the top.
If you do choose to take a role at ThoughtExchange, trust me: It’s in your best interest to keep at arm’s length, breathe through the frustration, and let it be “just another job” and nothing more.
