Not the best place to work - Engineer Backplane Employee Review

The management of the company has not participated here at all, but I can’t stand by and continually let a few people hurt the amazing team we have in this company. And let’s be clear, there can be no motivation for anyone to make comments here other than spite. Honestly, it’s difficult to respond to these types of remarks. One of our core values is Character and we have been rebuilding our team with that in mind. I know that we shouldn’t take things personally, but I truly don’t know what it says about the character of someone that supposedly worked here for 3 years, made friends, believed in our mission, but feels okay with hurting those same people and their families. That person would obviously not fit in the culture we are building today. Over the last year, our business made the transition from early stage startup, we faced hard challenges head on, and made difficult changes to the team and to the way we work together. Startups often begin their journey with a talented group of people, but to take the business to the next level it requires a different set of talents, more focused and determined. I can’t speak to the fraternal feel of the firm in it’s early days, but I also don’t necessarily think that camaraderie is a negative. That said, the company has as much responsibility to mature in its processes as any single team member, and in our case management was admittedly slow to guide that process. Backplane is no longer and most of the people here have never met most some of the original team. Place is the evolution of Backplane, taking the original value and making it possible for anyone to use our tools to organize people. As a startup, the early organization had people filling hybrid roles across design and engineering. As you might imagine, that led to not only inferior design, but inferior engineering. The team today is organized as a partnership between an amazing design and product group, and engineers that shock us continually with what they can do. Far from a fraternity, we now are more than 50% amazingly talented women. You have to do nothing more than come here to see a professional, focused team. We needed to make changes in order to grow and those decisions by their nature affect people on the team. I can tell you that these changes were important and necessary but it’s easier to let the results speak for themselves. Please take a look at our work, download our apps. They show what a truly talented group of people are able to do in spite of the difficulties we have to bear. Lastly, let’s talk about vision, we love doing that. There is some truth in what was stated above. We began our journey with the idea that people felt free and safe engaging in a world with purpose. When people come together around a shared passion, in worlds that aren’t exposed to everyone you know, the engagement levels are off the chart. Backplane did lose momentum when it began focusing more on strategic partnerships than on viral growth. But that is old news. Today, you will find a viral world that is driven by user-create social environment with growing verticals around anime, gaming, cosplay, music, sports, etc. Place puts the power of social networking back in the hands of the people. To explain what we do in the simplest way - if you pick up your phone and open Facebook, you are looking at everyone else’s life, what everyone else cares about. In social networking, our individuality is being lost, we are simply part of a crowd. Place, is your perspective on the world, it connects you to what you care most about, your family, your church, your favorite band, your school, a video game, dogs, etc. We don't believe that anyone should be able to know everything about you at the glance of a profile. We are each more fascinating than you would expect. We don’t have one face, but many. We express ourselves differently across different parts of our lives. Place, is all about you ... not who you know.