Throughout my entire career – be it only a decade or so – I have never felt compelled to write a poor review of a company, even when opportunities failed to work out at no fault of my own. However, this company needs a warning label and I would be remiss if I did not try to warn others away from this incredibly corrupt and toxic workplace.
I am not a disgruntled employee, I was not fired and I also am not short of experience, skill, talent or capability to bring about positive change and meaningful impact to a company.
This company cannot keep great talent and that is clear by how dated their entire organization is: in tools and technologies, in processes, in hiring methodology, in professional development, in leadership and in overall company values.
Let me make one point very clear: this company has zero values.
While there are a handful of incredible people working here, they simply have no impact on the whole and are just a cog in the machine. There is no integrity, no honesty, no humanity and no concern whatsoever for the individuals, the teams or the departments that make up this company. There simply is a goal to increase revenue, fill gaps with warm bodies, populate online platforms with fake reviews and candy coat the organization to hide how unhealthy and toxic it is.
And these are not just my opinions: employees are underpaid and not compensated fairly based on the local, average salaries for their roles; employees often hold down multiple roles while being underpaid for the one reflected in their title; Directors and/or Managers are let go leaving departments without leadership and employees are forced into those management roles with no authority or compensation; employees of all departments are subject to the poor hours, PTO policy and benefits packages of call center employees; contractors and freelancers are used constantly to quickly fill gaps, but good talent and team building is non-existent; members of their leadership team consistently ask employees to push down negative Google and Glassdoor reviews with positive ones.
In addition to the lack of values and poor employee benefits, the workload and expectations are unrealistic and often impossible. The shared services model of MetaCoastal is simply a business structure that allows them to leverage the same resources for every business entity – and even when they expand the portfolio of businesses within the enterprise, they expect the same number of resources to execute two, three, four times the work (seriously, there are 15 different brands in this enterprise and ONE graphic designer).
There are few standard processes, no measures of efficiency, no tactics or methodologies to improve productivity, just an impossible list of expectations and demands with little awareness of the resources, tools and time needed to execute flawlessly and efficiently.
They tout a structured yet fun company culture with an open-door policy, review system in place, fun committee and travel benefits, but they aren’t successfully executed, broadly communicated or useful.
In the end, it all boils down to the most toxic and corrupt executive leadership I have ever experienced in a company. There are blatantly obvious rivalries in leadership, and if anyone in leadership likes you or sees value in you, their rivals are now your rivals. It is literally like being in high school, except that you’re not a pawn in a popularity contest, you’re an employee trying to make a living for your family and a career for yourself.
Leadership will promise you compensation bonuses for your hard work, they will dangle promotion opportunities before you, inundate you with compliments and pleasantries, but at the end of the day they just use you and squeeze everything they can out of you.
If you communicate concerns, raise issue that you need work/life balance or that the workload is too much, you are weak and impatient – they will literally treat you this way and communicate this across the organization to belittle you and taint your reputation. They will put all the expectation on you and your team with massive pressure to execute and perform exceptionally, while not giving you the tools or resources to do so, and also not improving their own processes and fulfilling their expectations to you as leadership.
Across the board – company values, operations, professional development, workplace environment, employee retention and leadership – this company fails on every front.
I have no idea how they have been in business for over 25 years, my only assumption is that the original values and core purpose of the company are simply no longer present, but were there at some point.
