Management is the crux of the problem with this company. They boast that this is where you can make an impact, but the majority of the time you are put on a retractable leash, manifested in the following ways:
- No career growth: The bulk part of your day-to-day is about putting out fires and fixing what is broken with the infrastructure. Your hard work is not appreciated because managers tend to gaslight employees and blow small issues out of proportion in order to downplay their teams' contributions. In addition, leadership generally prefers talkers over doers. Having a presence on Slack is highly emphasized as an indicator of engagement and a critical factor for "recognition". Some managers also constantly pit employees against each other in order to incite unhealthy competition, which is both demoralizing and counter-productive. The truth is that these managers are in such positions not by their leadership capacity but by tenure, so don't expect to learn anything from your managers if you already have several years of work experience.
- Finger-pointing: Managers claim that they are there to support you, but when something happens you are more likely to be thrown under the bus first. What they are more interested in figuring out is "who" contributed to an incident than "how" to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.
- No accountability: Managers don't know how to properly set priorities and your priorities can change every week. Depending on where the fires are, you end up spending time putting out fires instead of working on what is on your OKR. Instead of acknowledging your hard work on putting out fires, managers would question why you have not been working on your OKR; they then use this as an excuse of you not meeting expectations and hence not meriting a raise or promotion.
All in all, this is a lead gen business for property management companies. Period. They are touting to be a "marketplace for renters to find a home they love", yet most of the work is not around improving renter experience but pleasing property management companies. Risk aversion, as a result, sums up most of the decision-making. Any new changes that go beyond people's comfort zone would encounter lots of pushback. That is why to this day renters are still required to fill out a lengthy questionnaire before they could see any apartment matches, only because this is a very "sensitive" area to change.
Don't get fooled by the review ratings. You will uncover many problems and find that the company is not as great as it seems.
