1. You never know what person you're going to get when Waylon walks in the door, he's erratic, rude, ignorant, arrogant, and honestly doesn't care about anyone else's opinion. He'll yell at you to be quiet or you have to leave and then he'll spend 20 minutes bouncing a tennis ball against the wall talking to whoever will listen to him about some self-fulfilling topic.
2. He is VERY partial to hiring young, beautiful women who he works with at the Boulder office. It gives off the most disgusting vibe and none of us ever wanted to be alone with him when he would often cross the professional boundaries of wanting to hang out after work or even during work at his house or a coffee shop.
3. For a company that aims to promote mindfulness and help people understand the roots of their pain and suffering, the material published often was almost like a psychological crutch to allow people to be victims of their own issues – and by that I mean the pieces that glorified being an empath trapped by a narcissist. Could this really happen? Yes. Does Elephant have the clout or licensing to give real advice on an actually very dangerous and toxic topic? Hell no.
4. No matter how hard we worked, it was never enough. All the employees were rated and pitted against each other every week. We were never trusted or given any sense of pride in our job. I don't think there was a single day I didn't cry or have a panic attack for fear of having to deal with a wild Waylon.
5. The salary, or lack thereof, was not even enough to live on in someone's basement. And we had no insurance or additional benefits. No PTO or sick days, either.
6. Waylon will also happily write libel to destroy anyone who calls him out for valid reasons, while additionally creating clickbait on his Facebook pages (posting old articles, giving them new titles and images) just to increase website traffic and revenue. And let's also not be remiss in mentioning that he loves to take Buzzfeed articles, write one sentence above them, make a clickbait title, and then profit off of someone else's journalism and work.
I would not wish this job on my worst enemy. Waylon is a fraud and a creep. He is a walking hypocritical mess who spews perverted teachings of Buddhism and kindness. If you want to support independent writers, by all means, please do. And last but not least, you should know Elephant only pays the top small percentage of theirs, and even then, it's hardly enough to be worth the expectations. I cannot express enough how horrible of an experience and a company Elephant is, and I would strongly encourage anyone thinking of an editorial or social media-focused career to look elsewhere.