Pros
-Working with some of the most talented and passionate individual contributors I have ever met. -Many used to be very interested in Space as a communal interest. Having rocket launch watch parties, posting about NASA and ESA missions. -Actually taking vacation is very accepted and even suggested here.
Cons
-Absolutely horrible leadership coupled with an obsession of hiring outside middle managers means the talented individual contributors will stay in their place and be neither seen nor heard. -No training for what passes for managers and absolutely no career development plans or transparency on the annual promotion process. -Watching talented people leave for other opportunities where their efforts are valued means every employee knows their future is not at Spire. -Buzzwords are very common but this company is not run at all like a technology company with sales and marketing being the biggest and only focus rather than on development and innovation. -Significant bureaucracy and hierarchy of a European multinational but with the size of a startup that was supposedly founded in San Francisco. -Absolutely no communication or transparency, especially now that they are public which seems to be an excuse to communicate even less than in the earlier days. -Headcount grew very fast which led to a lot of mediocre hires which turned into significant layoffs after IPO. -Extremely cheap on anything employee focused like home office setup while wasting money on first class flights for the c-suite. -There is also an extremely weird opposition to Spire swag/t-shirts. Three different heads of HR have said they would make a company store to get branded items all to have it canceled by the CEO. In three years I only got one t-shirt and one hoody when we went public and raised close to $300M. -No vision for what this company should be or strive to do, there is a new roadmap suggested about every month. Peter the CEO has never set or communicated a corporate strategy which makes execution very ambiguous. -Archaic growth plans that are driven by sales and marketing with no mention of product and engineering. How are you going to grow a business with nothing new to sell?
