Pros
Great product that really does help people.
Cons
Someday someone will write a history of Sword Health. "HUBRIS; How one man's ego created a world class company, then destroyed it." I have never experienced a leader as unabashedly arrogant and contemptuous as the CEO of Sword. When asked at a company all hands with 600 people what he thought people said about him when he leaves the room, he answered "there goes the smartest man in the room." That's a verbatim quote, and only gives you the tiniest glimpse of the truly impressive scale of his ego. It's tragic because he's brilliant in some ways (technical brilliance and tireless work ethic, while having glaring deficits of EQ, empathy, and other important CEO traits), had a phenomenal start-up idea, executed well to get it up and running, then hired a top flight sales leader who in turn built a world-class sales org. The team absolutely crushed it for a few years, helping turn Sword into a juggernaut. But the CEO committed that classic CEO error regarding his sales team. He told the sales team that if they sold the product like crazy they're compensation would be commensurate with their performance; and when that happened, he resented them for said compensation, despite the hundreds of millions added to his net worth. His open disdain for salespeople lead to him personally commandeering the sales comp plan, taking it from one of the best in the industry to being the very worst. He not only slashed the comp but also openly insulted his salespeople at about every available opportunity. The sales team imploded, the incredible growth stopped, and the once-healthy culture died. Despite very smart people warning the CEO about the profound damage being done by his war on his own sales org, his pride apparently wouldn't allow him to desist, even after he could see it for himself. He thought he was going to be the tech leader who revolutionized enterprise sales, with the basic idea being this. Instead of having salespeople who are experienced and hardworking enough make the company (and CEO) tons of money, and in turn paying them according to industry standards and treating them with respect, he was going to be the genuis who figured out how to get those salespeople to do all that, while paying them far below industry standard and treating them with contempt. I mean, you should hear about some of the unbelievably petty, dishonest gymnastics he'd have the finance/ops team go through to, for example, claw back a $1,500 commission they had earned and already been paid, according to the comp plan, more than a year before. It seemed like he was looking for just about any chance to anger his own people. It's honestly the most insane act of corporate self-immolation I have ever seen. There is a rift between the Portugal office and the US employees, and the CEO has been moving more control over departments to the Portugal office. This has proven problematic for the US folks, and is a bad strategy, given that 99.99% of the revenue comes from the US. The CEO favors his fellow Portuguese employees. This seems to be, in part, due to them generally propping up his cult of personality, whereas the US employees see where the emperor has no clothes. It's not just the Sales org. Everyone is underpaid and overworked and stifled by a dysfunctional company culture.