Nice office, hollow company - Marketing Shoplo Employee Review

I wish there was a review like mine before I applied. There are a few pros, but they are overwhelmed by the cons. - Some of the coworkers are good at their jobs (mostly Marketing team), - Getting hired is trivial, - There is a tiny bit of freedom as to how you do your job, - A very nice office, - Above average social media presence if you're into that sort of thing (showing off in front of your friends, that is)

- The superficiality It drove me crazy, and if you're anything like me, it will do the same to you. The office is beautiful, the CEO knows how to sell the company during the interview, the social media presence is other-worldly, the websites look really nice, but the minute you start talking to people during the onboarding process (a terrible onboarding process, more about it later), you realize that it's all fake and that (almost?) everyone in the company is frustrated with their jobs to the maximum, no processes work and a lot of basic processes are completely lacking, some coworkers hate one another, others act terribly towards colleagues, people quit because they're depressed and were promised things they never got, the customer success team is drowning in bug reports never acted on by engineering team, the product team works on a lot of things ad-hoc and without solid planning, the marketing team's initiatives are shot down one by one, and all that the management does is buy a cake every once in a while in hopes to snooze another wave of resignations. - The product It's a poor piece of software, very buggy and hacky, quite often slow, difficult to maintain, and expensive to develop. I'd say that the product reflects the superficial soul of the company perfectly. It looks nice on the outside, but is lacking heart. Years of hasty development have pushed it to the point of hitting the enormous and ever-growing wall of bug reports. Adding new features is apparently very similar to playing a game of Jenga. - No real strategy, just short-term tactics The company pivots in various directions very often - be it areas of product decisions, expansion plans, even things as simple as benefits. Some decisions from countless meetings are forgotten and never acted upon, for others there's no clearly assigned drivers and they kinda... disappear. The company most likely requires some external consulting that would help them build some structures, or should hire strong leaders that could drive it towards a common goal. At the moment the direction of the company is very blurry and it's not very obvious what its endgame is supposed to be in the market dominated by much stronger competitors from the US. - The micromanagement As far as I know each team operates the same way. The leader of the team prepares their plans for the coming month, then they present them to the CEO who kills most of them, leaves a couple but recommends to give those the lowest priority. Ideas that the CEO came up with are looked at very favorably, and sometimes the trick is to make your idea sound like his if you want to make sure you and your team will be able to work on it. - A terrible onboarding process I've never felt as lost as when starting my tenure in Shoplo. You are given a list of what which people do in the company and you have to locate them (which is easier said than done - there's no place where you can match a face to a name), and basically ask them to tell you about their respective department. If you don't ask, you're highly unlikely to get your first task in the first week. There is no one guiding you through the first weeks and yet some co-workers expect you to deliver plus-value as soon as you start (!). Such an easy thing to fix, and a very quick win that could improve the horrible first impression... I've heard some changes are planned but I'll never get the chance to test-drive them and describe them. - It is unclear what language is the official one in the office... so how will you communicate? The company hired a lot of foreigners but fails miserably at making English the official language in the office (or even on Slack!). A lot of employees speak little to no English. Both the CEO and the CTO write in Polish on Slack channels and sometimes even speak Polish during speeches. Maybe it's a cultural thing (I doubt it, I've worked at other Polish companies without this problem) but it's no justification! It's nice to have a common breakfast every Friday, but what's the point if there are people at the table who cannot understand you? Beats me. - No people operations team Ever since the head of people operations and office manager have both left the company, Shoplo simply does not have a replacement and it seems like the CEO's decision is to not have any. Therefore, there is no operations staff whatsoever. No office management, no reception, no HR. This results in a rather poor morale since there's no one to care of it. The only showcases of company reaching out to employees are related to damage control in the form of a free cake whenever someone quits. - Poor benefits and compensation It's the first job for a large subset of employees, but even then you can probably do better for yourself in Warsaw. Salaries are low, benefits are non-existent, and they don't even give you private medical care which is a Polish standard in 2018.

Access to great technology Stunning office & location Accessible KPIs and targets

Micromanaged Company policy not enforced CEO's partner (former employee) actually runs the company