Where to begin?
For one, the Glassdoor ratings are wrong because StyleSeat told its employees to write 5 star reviews to help recruiting.
The company is collapsing because of the poor leadership of cofounders Dan Levine and Melody McCloskey. Almost half the company (disclosure: including me) was laid off last week. They simply do not have the experience to run a successful company nor, apparently, do they have the ability to learn how to. I didn't interact much with Melody, but it was hard to watch her get interviewed by top news organizations and win tech awards when she is running her company into the ground. It was hard for me to believe anything she said because what she said often didn't align with reality or the hard data. Dan was similarly oblivious. He would frequently make spur of the moment decisions and ignores ideas that didn't align with his own. He seemed to make decisions based on what he wanted rather than based on data and feedback provided by our data scientists, VP's and other company leads.
The overarching strategy at StyleSeat has been to fire people. People disappear all the time and the company doesn't even mention they're gone half the time. It's clear that they do not value hard work or career growth. You come to work for (not with) the cofounders. I sincerely hope for the sake of future employees that, after StyleSeat goes under, Dan and Melody are never in a position of leadership again.
PS: The office is rat and fly infested, and it's located in an alley that may have the most human excrement of any street in SF. I'm seriously not exaggerating.
