Strong Mission, Terrible Leadership - Anonymous employee Newsela Employee Review

I used to think that the company simply lacked product leadership and engineering leadership (I won’t pass judgment on the interim CTO), but actually this company is lacking a capable CEO. No one wants to admit it but the product is stale and neither the Chief Product Officer nor the CEO knows what to do. What’s worse is that they don’t actually want the input of the people talking to community or those talking to customers. That’s very sad because the CRO and CCO are smart and know what they are doing. The CEO is too insecure to accept that he’s in way over his head and prefers to behave like a petulant child. He is clearly more interested in perpetuating the myth and keeping his job rather than doing his job. You can understand, and possibly forgive, mismanagement from someone who’s never been a leader or had previous success, but what’s worse is that from an HR perspective, Matt Gross makes Travis Kalanick (CEO of Uber) look like the Dalai Lama. Harassment, intimidation, and bullying remain rampant and are clearly driven from the top. I think the new Chief People Officer is his lackey and enforcer of careless and reactionary policies. If you’re trying to constantly intimidate your employees, asking them to move their desks so you can see what’s on their screen, and constantly eavesdropping into meetings and looking over shoulders, you’re really not going to create a positive working environment or engender the support of your employees. Sadly, the company clearly missed the opportunity to right the ship when it could. At this point, it’s simply not worth waiting around for anything to be fixed, since I don’t believe management or the board really care to fix anything. I’ll go the way of the several smart, capable people before me – leave the company and find a place where my views and contributions are valued and where I can make a difference. Matt / Lori – please also don’t post any BS about how you would have wished that I would have come to talk to you before positing this review. No one believes any of these positive reviews, and we all know that they have been planted by you. I would urge Glassdoor to re-confirm these reviews, because I don’t believe anyone in the company except them could have painted such a rosy picture. If these are actually authentic reviews, I would urge these employees to please state their names so that I can I understand what I am missing, or better yet what substances they are taking to perhaps feel this way. I can assure you that there are several people like me that would love to have this euphoric feeling of an alternative reality. As you can appreciate, I won’t be sharing my name since I am certain it would result in retaliation. But don’t worry I won’t be, and suspect many others won’t be, around for long….