Not worth it - Anonymous employee ProfitWell Employee Review

Hey there - first off, I want to apologize (this is PC - CEO of ProfitWell). Although I take issue with some of the things you’ve said, you’re clearly not fulfilled in your current gig and you don’t feel like you can bring these thoughts and questions to me or another member of the team. Our goal is to create a culture where you're fulfilled and can communicate openly, and while we're certainly not for everyone, table stakes is you being able to bring grievances or questions to at least one person at ProfitWell. Ultimately you not feeling this way is on me and the leadership here. There's no excuse for it, so I'm deeply sorry. Seriously and sincerely. Since this is public I do feel the need to address some of the things you said, but I want to be clear that I'm not trying to take away from the fact that you didn't feel comfortable bringing things up or asking questions. So in that light, I want to start with the biggest topic (at least in my mind) - misconduct in the office. We have never had an issue of sexual or other work maleficence in the history of the company. From anyone, past or present. This is something we take seriously and from the board to onboarding, we show there’s a zero tolerance policy for this type of conduct. This is why PeopleOps reports directly to me the CEO (not the CPO as you mentioned) and also has access to the board and our external legal counsel, so in the case an issue comes up with anyone, they have multiple avenues. I personally also take this topic extremely seriously (especially as someone who was a victim of sexual misconduct). When there’s even a whiff of something, I drop everything to make sure we look through the situation with PeopleOps and do whatever necessary to ensure voices are heard and any situation is handled swiftly and sensitively. Thankfully we have not had an issue and we work hard to ensure I can say that for the history of the company. I don't know what you're referring to specifically, but I just want to make sure that's super clear and if there's a situation that you feel wasn't handled or that the management, leadership, and board teams don't know about please contact me or PeopleOps directly. Now if I take your statement very generally (which I think may be the case) as opposed to literally, I think it's important to point out that we do have a lot of strong personalities at ProfitWell. There isn't a single person here - including you - who doesn't care deeply and depending on how that care is manifested, sometimes there are interpersonal conflicts that need to be mediated. We've certainly had situations where someone doesn't like how someone expressed themselves or said something. This tends to be what happens when you put a lot of caring people into an organization and unleash them on a mission. None of these have risen to the level of misconduct, but if it's helpful, we very much look into any of these situations that need a third party. Most of the time these are handled amongst the parties involved though, as we create a culture that treats people like adults and encourages feedback with charitable interpretations. We trust adults to handle these situations like adults. Sometimes that's hard though depending on the situation, so on rarer occasions these will involve a manager or PeopleOps (or even me). Most of these situations get handled by the obvious route - a discussion with both parties and coming up with a plan (if needed). We're all humans and sometimes our emotions can get the better of us and we just need someone to help get to clarity. In the most extreme examples we've definitely moved people within the organization to work with others. To be clear, this is seniority agnostic, and actually worse on a manager, because in our mantra of servant leadership, we always assume the manager should have done more or is at fault at the outset of the discussion. I hope that clarifies a bit. Unless you've been involved directly, you probably haven't seen a more extreme example on the inside and maybe you're hearing second hand from someone who didn't agree with an outcome. It's outlined on the PeopleOps at ProfitWell memo on the Wiki homepage. Yet, seriously and sincerely - please contact me or anyone else who can get the information to me if you feel the above wasn't the case. ProfitWell is no place for misconduct. In terms of some of your other comments, I think it’s important to understand that there are certainly going to be tradeoffs coming to a growing, young company as opposed to a more established one. Sometimes communication isn’t as uniform or spread as we think it is or we don’t have resources for certain things and made a decision that has consequences. This is why we are exceptionally transparent and keep the org flat so you can ask anyone about anything. We've never suppressed any information unless it's HR related to an individual and I feel as if some of the assumptions you made could have been cleared up by simple discussions or asking many people at ProfitWell. You may not have liked the answer or the tradeoffs being made, but you at least would have had clarity. Maybe you didn't feel comfortable, but I'm not sure things like who PeopleOps reports to or how much we spend on marketing falls into that bucket since we are so transparent. Regardless, you may not have seen the performance review memo on our Wiki's homepage that talks about how we do comprehensive reviews twice per year and that these are not an excuse for not receiving feedback consistently off cycle. Based on the little information Glassdoor gives me it looks like you haven’t been through a review cycle since we skipped the Spring 2020 one because of COVID, so maybe you’re not aware of them or missed the several all hands where we talked and reminded everyone about skipping the cycle since so much was happening with COVID. In terms of comp comments you made, you likely didn't realize that our comp strategy is pegged off market data at 100% of market and encompasses bonuses for a number of roles. Some of our roles are composites though, so sometimes the market data is flawed or as when dealing with averages there are certainly examples of other companies who pay more (or less). We don't clearly explain this as well as we could, but I'm more than happy to walk you through things and I'd love your help improving here. In terms of your comments on promotion process, we specifically designed our framework to control for favoritism, tenure, and negotiation prowess, but we certainly haven't explained this enough as we continue to normalize our processes. The list certainly goes on - we'e not perfect and we're certainly not going to perfectly communicate everything. We're growing quickly and the tradeoffs of that growth are that some of these things we have to prioritize and sometimes proactive communication falls to the bottom of the list. What helps here is we communicate openly as much as humanly possible while also having an environment where you can literally ask about and get an explanation for anything (unless it's an individual's HR details). We write essays detailing major pieces of the organization, we have weekly AMAs where you can bring questions, we have a feedback form, we have a system of people who can get information to whomever you need to if you don't feel comfortable, and we also have a leadership team that drops everything when there's a problem to handle it, even if it's just talking to someone at 11pm on a Friday night because they need help. We try to (and have succeeded quite a bit) in keeping a culture where the truth wins vs anyone’s opinion inherently being weighted over another and making sure there are many avenues to communication to make sure you’re able to check your assumptions and assuage any fears. We’re not perfect, but we do try extremely hard and the collective always takes precedence over the leadership here. For example, as you mentioned we did do a temporary pay cut for those who made over $65k in order to make sure we didn’t have to furlough as many people, but the GM, CPO, and myself all took our salaries to $0. Another example that you alluded to - I was supposed to be out of content/marketing a year ago, but the reason I'm still there is specifically because we put that budget into sales and engineering instead. Nothing would please me more than if I was out of marketing and content completely. It's just taking some time and we spend very little money on marketing because of this tradeoff in investing in departments that make our products. I'm not presenting any of the above to claim you're wrong or to get gold stars, but to merely give you the perspective I wish you were able to seek. That's on us and I'm trying to make up for it by explaining a bit more. Our default is very much servant leadership and as we're growing I can see how a not-so-charitable interpretation could misconstrue things if you didn't have insight into some aspects you brought up. Plus, we don't like to talk about some of these examples a lot, because we feel they should just be the default. Although that likely cost us you getting a different impression or experience, so again - I'm sincerely sorry. In closing, please come and find me or another member of the team you're comfortable speaking with, so we can get you more context or the help you need. I can't promise we're going to get everything right or that you're going to agree with a tradeoff we made, but I can certainly give you transparency into those tradeoffs or realities. At the end of the day, I care deeply about every person at ProfitWell, because there's no way we can fulfill our mission without a team that's fulfilled by solving tough problems and moving in one direction. My hope is this message can help us restart a bit, so sincerely please reach out. :)