Don't give these bad actors your time and labor. - Frontend Developer Crescendo Collective Employee Review

There is nothing bad about working here except for minor things that could be dishonestly spun as net positives. Maybe the office A/C is too high. Just kidding. The antics of senior management and their deleterious effects on the company culture and values should disqualify this company from ever being considered as a potential employer. There is the infamous co-owner mentioned in almost every other review here, and his abusive relationship with his employees is the base of almost every problem at this company. He habitually treats his employees in ways that are completely inappropriate in any context with performative public tantrums and nasty dressing-downs. His unstable behavior and pathological need to show everyone that he is the top dog affects every facet of business operations. Employees show no initiative and feel no empowerment because he needs to be the only 'good idea fairy' in the room, where everything can be credited to him and his unique genius. His counterpart, while nominally majority owner, appears to be a submissive nonentity who acts dumbfounded if one brings up the other owner's malfeasance. One gets the impression that he inadvertently enables the other owner by not knowing what goes on in his company or taking action against it, but this is a ruse. In reality, he is actively complicit and happily tolerates it. There is no concern for employees on a human level, it is solely regarding their instrumental value. That valuation can change very adversely, very quickly. Your entire measure of value is dependent on what the dominant co-owner thinks of you, as there is no actual process of employee valuation and performance tracking. Anyone who has been here for even a few months has seen absurd levels of turnover in the front of the office, and this cycle has gone on for years. This is directly due to the bully owner's penchant for mistreating employees to the point where they quit with little notice or after spending little time at the job, or throwing them under the bus and firing them with no notice. At no point has this been properly recognized and addressed as the root of major issues, only spun as former employees not being able to live up to the very high standards of a supposed world-class agency that moves fast. This deflection would be risible if it weren't so insulting. The company partner claims that he's "working on" his flaws and that he's usually not problematic, that he's only human. This only serves as cover for inexcusable actions where just one instance irrevocably poisons the well. He and his counterpart will claim to want feedback and dialogue with their employees regarding their concerns, but don't be fooled by this. This is code for them sniffing out employees who may express moral reservations with how they act and operate. Management is extremely perturbed by the negative press that they receive on Glassdoor. I expressed my concerns to the CEO about how the negative reviews and word of mouth scare away potential qualified candidates and that it was disheartening that nothing was being done to truly address the root cause. I offered advice and hitherto new information in good faith and offered to help facilitate communication between discouraged coworkers and management. They of course already knew exactly what was going on. I didn't know it at the time, but they had been going on witch hunts trying to ascertain which current employee had written a negative review–it was later mysteriously removed–and baselessly accused people of doing this, forcing them to leave. Within two weeks, I was told to leave the company by the owners, too. The CEO had taken what I told him in confidence and snitched to the other co-owner, and they made the decision to give me the boot. But, I had seen it coming. I had been prepared to lose my job because I had seen others fired for doing the same thing in the past. We had a mid-year review of company matters the day before, and in the presentation there was what sounded like a thinly-veiled threat to deal with employees who were displeased with how things were going, and that they would not be a part of the company's future. It's shocking that anyone would threaten all their employees like this. In that last call with management, the bully co-owner made a snide comment to me saying that I could write a bad review on Glassdoor. I didn't want to do it at first, but I've come around to his suggestion. That's the best idea he's ever had, and I thank him for it. I was told that my work stands for itself and that I could get a good reference from Crescendo Collective, but the owners are the last people that I would ever want vouching for my character. What would a good reference from them say about me? My departure was unannounced and unacknowledged, with no public thanks for the contributions I've made. It's a shame that I gave so much time to line their pockets, because I was hoping for at least a flippant, tone-deaf poem.