Initial review would have been positive but then slowly went downhill - Anonymous employee Brainjolt Employee Review

As much as I’d like to sit here and defend Brainjolt I think it would be more helpful to own up to some of the criticism put forward in this review… Some of the observations they made are the unavoidable downsides of who we are at Brainjolt and what we do. For better or worse… * We’re learning as we go. * We have to continually adapt in order to survive and thrive in the world of online publishing. * We sometimes put people in roles that their work history hasn’t specifically prepared them for. * We pressure our teams to hit their goals. * And, yes, we occasionally have to make the extremely difficult decision to let people go. And then some of the other critiques in this review are observations of straight-up weaknesses of ours, no excuses to be made... * Our culture isn’t always what we want it to be. * We do not have strong systems in place for training (yet). * We could always do better at giving credit. * And in general, communication in the company should be clearer and more motivating. We have all the struggles that you’d expect in a small company founded by two introverts. We’re working to improve. There is only one specific point I’d like to address somewhat in our defense… I know absolutely nothing about a formal report to HR of a physical threat being made. I don’t know who this happened to, who did it, when it happened, or what the threat was. Obviously, I can’t ask questions back to an anonymous review, but I wish I could hear more about this so that I could resolve it. We value a peaceful and respectful workplace and have always done our best to maintain that. Perhaps we haven’t always succeeded in that ideal, but I can promise that a threat to someone’s well-being would be clearly addressed if I or anyone else on our leadership team knew about it. As disheartening as it can be, a negative review is more helpful than a positive one if the goal is to get better. We want to get better at Brainjolt, so I appreciate these criticisms. We’re taking them seriously. Thanks for giving your input, Anonymous Reviewer, and thanks to the rest of you for reading their review and my response. -Abraham, Founder