Pros
- Creative environment, creative and vibrant team and co-workers - Trauma bonding with your co-workers - The occasional free products - Free catered lunch, if you are on the executive team, they deem you worthy of it, or if it's your birthday. - Great brand values (that management doesn't ever follow.) - They pay well (for the Jacksonville area), but not necessarily for the amount of work and headache you'll endure. - Dog friendly office, but only on Fridays, and only if your dogs get along with the CEO's completely untrained, aggressive, loud, poorly behaved dogs that she brings into the office every day.
Cons
- Extremely disorganized - you'll be pulled in every which direction, all the time. CEO/Management has almost no idea what they want, but you'll need to do it, and then probably redo it, because of the disorganization and lack of direction. No structure to the organization, and without that structure there is a huge lack of accountability. Furthermore, what organizational hierarchy they do have, doesn't make any sense. - Insane micromanaging. I've never seen this level of micromanagement. One thing produced in my department probably went through at least 6 different approval processes at the CEO level. (Which I've never seen in my career before.) However, the CEO has no time to sit down and approve things, which creates an insane paradox. Despite going through all these approval processes, the CEO will sometimes cancel things in the 11th hour, so you've worked on something for hours and hours, only for it to get thrown out. Expect to spin you wheels all the time. - Absolutely no training or guidance. I would ask for guidance and it would be met with condescension and hostility. - Despite attempts to align their brand with a "hippie" aesthetic, Natural life puts absolutely no value on sustainability or eco-friendly practices. The amount of single use plastic that the home office alone goes through was disgusting to me. Only plastic utensils for their catered lunches. Single use plastic cups by the water station. Cheap products made overseas with the lowest end fabrics for the lowest possible price. - They tout "spreading kindness" in their products, but the CEO needs to read, absorb and follow that advice. On multiple accounts, I witnessed her openly bad-mouthing fellow employees during big meetings, when they wouldn't be there to defend themselves or their work. She is absolutely toxic. A few co-workers were equally toxic, and they made the workplace unbearable for me. - The CEO will frequently derail meetings, so nothing gets done. She'll get sidetracked by a single word and go on a rant causing nothing to get done. - They say they have flexible hours, but they don't. Not at all. They want you in the office every day. Management will say all day long that they want people to have a work-life balance and to not work nights or weekends, but the only people they promote are the ones that work ALL THE TIME. I would get emails starting at 5:30 am from some co-workers and would continue to get them into the wee hours of the night. - They will also overburden you with tasks. Expect to (attempt to) do the jobs of 3 people, and get admonished when it doesn't get done. - Nightmares! I had nightmares several times a week because of this job. - You'll have to share workspace with the CEOs awful dogs. Your lunch will probably get stolen by her dogs, and you can't do anything about it, because they'll bite you if you do. I'm a dog person, but those dogs are a liability and a nuisance to the workplace. I AM SO HAPPY I DO NOT WORK HERE ANYMORE!