A Sinking Ship - Anonymous employee Crunchyroll Employee Review

1.0
17 Feb 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people used to be the best part of working here, but so many of them have been laid off or left. The products we worked on used to be great also, but all that work has been sent off to foreign countries to exploit cheap, poor quality labor.

Cons

I've worked at my fair share of companies and seen and survived layoffs in the past. I have never seen the level of disrespect shown to engineers at this company, however. After months of pushing us incredibly hard (late hours, working holidays, weekends, etc) to deliver on VRV, after delivering, our senior management decided to lay off almost all of engineering. Engineers were brought into tiny rooms one by one, told they were being let go and then escorted out of the office like criminals. I don't know how management here sleeps at night. Culture has suffered to an extreme degree. What was once a very fun place to work with optimistic people has turned into a depressing office full of zombies, wondering when the next round of layoffs are coming and what work there actually is to be done in San Francisco since they farmed off all the work to Moldova. Senior leadership is fostering a culture a of distrust and fear. It truly is a shame what senior management has done to this company. In a span of about two years, they turned this place from one of the best places to work in the Bay Area to a sinking ship with employees clawing their way to get out.

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Crunchyroll Response
9y
We understand and respect that everyone is entitled to their opinion when it comes to how decisions are made and imposed. It is challenging when a company is heading on an upward growth trajectory because change is inevitable. Perhaps we could do a better job to prepare our people for change. We are constantly learning and taking feedback and making changes. We have to be agile at this time because we have high hopes and we are uniquely positioned in the industry to accomplish amazing things. Some of the decisions we made in the past 6 weeks were not made lightly. Many people were impacted - current employees, former employees, perspective employees. What we can do is strive to be transparent and continue to make decisions so that we can offer an amazing experience to our users, our community and our employees. We had a stellar year last year, and the decisions we made were done so that we could continue to grow at a rapid pace. We understand that this high growth environment is not for everyone. We hope that those who are on this journey with us will continue to bring passion and dedication to the work they deliver. Thank you for taking time to offer feedback in your review. As a leadership team we will work diligently to influence the culture in a positive way as we continue to grow and evolve. In response to how former employees were treated, we tried to treat those impacted with respect, and we offered generous packages so that we could support their transition onto to new opportunities in ways we could. These decisions and communications are never easy, and we understand how life-changing the decisions were for everyone involved. Again, we appreciate the time taken to offer feedback.

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