Cute clothes can't make up for toxic management - Anonymous employee Dôen Employee Review

I have worked at Doen for quite a few years now and it has evolved much since I first started; there have been many highs and lows, but I honestly couldn't see myself anywhere else. I started as a part time employee and have been growing and learning ever since. I truly feel like I'm building a career and I've been able to choose my own path here. I am continually impressed with every person on this small (but rapidly growing), vibrant team. Everyone is doing their best every day, and I love working and collaborating to create beautiful things. On the Product team side, attention to detail is astounding. We will do our best to create something that we can be proud of. I love our team. There’s great communication across departments; when something inevitably slips thought the cracks, there’s minimal finger pointing or blame assigning, just unbiased hindsight and collaborative damage control. For the most part, there’s high individual autonomy (within set boundaries). Minimal oversight on the daily, with managerial guidance for deadlines, calendar, and prioritization. We all work hard every day, and everyone is growing and learning together. Every day is a new challenge. I’ve never felt silly asking a question, and feel supported and trusted by the rest of my team and other departments. As far as the company; I appreciate their contributions to charities that I support, like planned parenthood and room to read. The impact team has also lead the charge to participate in programs for women in factories that increase the workers financial literacy and supports their families in a culturally sensitive way. Every year the impact team works to reduce carbon footprint and publish the findings on the website for full visibility, and visit all the factories and mills to audit and check conditions, making an effort to gain visibility on everything that goes into the product. I really value working with a company that prioritizes the human aspect of the product lifecycle. Office culture is nice and welcoming, and since most teams are partially remote, there is a nice balance of bustling and quiet days in the office. It’s also nice to have the option to work remotely occasionally as scheduling allows. We occasionally have speakers come to give lectures or special learning sessions, which is very cool and I wish we did more of.

I wish that there were more office events to get to know people across departments, especially at different locations. We’ve never done a retreat, and we really only do cross-department outings for special occasions (only once in the last year, honestly). We only have once company wide event per a year, during the holidays. We also used to do yoga in office once a week, but since the instructor was an employee, schedules became too tight and she cancelled. It would be nice to have more wellness offerings without placing the burden of execution on employees. Would love to travel and shop more to gather inspiration outside of the office as a team. (I believe this would be possible with a full team) While there has been an effort to increase benefits in the past few years, there’s still pretty minimal PTO and sick time, and we have had a few people leave the company simply because they could not take enough time off to manage their families. Obviously, managers and those higher in the company take as much time as they need, but the lower you are, the harder it is to build your own schedule. Days are long and packed during busy seasons, which feels more often than not lately. Growing pains for a growing company - despite efforts to grow our numbers, it’s not been fast enough. There's a lot of pressure sometimes, and even though managers are pretty understanding, it's occasionally overwhelming.

This was genuinely one of the most educational and hands-on internships I’ve had. I was given real responsibility and meaningful exposure to the full product development and production lifecycle, rather than being limited to administrative work. Coming from a design background, being immersed in end-to-end processes was especially valuable, and I appreciated being trusted with work that directly contributed to the team despite being an intern. The environment is fast-paced and demanding, but also highly developmental. I want to give high praise to the PD team; management was intentional about training, check-ins, and clearly defined responsibilities, which made expectations feel grounded and motivating. The pace was challenging, but it pushed me to think on my feet, adapt quickly, and understand how decisions ripple across departments. Someone proactive, curious, and comfortable in a high-expectation environment will definitely gain substantial hands-on experience here.

Onboarding could've been more structured. The initial learning curve was steep, and a clearer crash course on processes, terminology, and workflows would have made the transition smoother. Balancing responsibilities across two departments (Production and PD) was also challenging at times, as splitting days made it harder to stay fully immersed. Clearer task ownership in Production and more intentional workload planning would've improved the experience.