Harsh words it might appear at first glance, but I think many will agree completely deserved. I was one of many effected by sweeping and sudden layoffs in the immediate aftermath of Pep ascending to CEO, and as part of an apparent new strategy that appears equal parts cold hearted and short sighted. In short, join this company at your own risk. Leadership has no clue what they are doing and they will throw you under the bus suddenly and without hesitation. Consider the following:
• In a surprise meeting, it is announced that the now former CEO, and the VP I guess he was closest with has been removed and Pep has been promoted to CEO. This could happen anywhere I suppose, but in the communication of this decision the amount of aggressive scapegoating and lack of focus on the path forward for the company was noteable. Even before the other shoe dropped, many noted how immature it came across for anyone in a so called leadership position. The only things we were really told directly is the plan is to “focus on product” but also not to worry about our jobs which leads to the next point.
• Of course layoffs all over the organization commence almost exactly a week later, after being directly promised that wouldn’t happen. This involves doing away with some fairly essential staff mainly in customer facing roles such as sales and customer success. The most generous interpretation is that the leadership actually intends to fail several contracts they don’t think are important, but a more honest interpretation is they simply have no clue what these people were actually contributing and only saw them as a number on a balance sheet.
• So the plan is apparently to focus on product and ignore everything else. Keep in mind this is a company that was founded almost a decade ago now, so I don't know what they think is going to be so fundamentally different with a few more years of focused R&D. They seem to think that they can build the perfect software and everything else will take care of itself. To state briefly: it is a fool's errand to think that any software in the AI/ML space is going to be total plug and play. To pretend otherwise, can only betray a total ignorance of the landscape of this industry. I don’t believe in karma, but I do believe they have planted the seeds of their destruction with these arrogant moves.
If you ask current leadership about this I can predict you'll probably get some more scapegoating of the old CEO. Even assuming there's truth there (and I’m not convinced) keep in mind it was totally their own decision to lie to their employees and go forward with this absolute bonkers of a “strategy”.