Toxic environment - Software Consultant Tandem Employee Review

Dear Reviewer, As the CEO at Tandem, I’d like to thank you for taking your time to review our company operations and culture. It is incredibly worthwhile to hear this kind of feedback so that we can improve. I did want to address a few of your remarks as I believe they require additional context for our team and future applicants. 1) As a business, we need to cover payroll, employee benefits, and operating expenses each month; sometimes we have to make decisions based on these responsibilities. When this happens, we make every effort to be transparent about the reason we are taking on work and may rotate staff to accommodate objections. I can recall numerous occasions where team members have been restaffed due to objections or to prevent burnout. 2) Regarding commissions, nobody in the company receives commissions, not salespeople, not even myself. It has always been our belief that we should pay a healthy and competitive salary. At Tandem, sales are always a team effort; including salespeople and experts from our delivery teams. Because we as a team desire to do meaningful work, we believe that referrals aligning to our values should be forthcoming regardless of commission. 3) As the CEO I am indeed busy, but my time is always, always, available to our team. I have never denied a request for a one-on-one with any team member in the entire 10-year history of our company and truly welcome these meetings. I continue to be as accessible as possible and always take into account the viewpoints, ideas, feedback, and criticism from the team around me. I regret that you did not feel you could approach me easily as that was never the case. 4) We absolutely desire to work on Impact Sector projects, in fact, we do a fair amount of work in those areas. Our goal has always been for 50% of our projects to fall within the Impact Sector at any point in time and sometimes exceed that target. We do have to contend with market forces and the mix of customers that are seeking out our services but have a process for addressing ethical concerns raised by our team. 5) Tandem continues to feel like a small company, which we are at only 30 or so people. Our goal as a business is to make an ever-larger impact for our customers and that does require growth. But, that growth must never, ever, be at the expense of our team. Yes, with growth comes more process and structure. But, if we are thoughtful, that process and structure will only result in clearer expectations, greater empowerment and autonomy, and paths to professional growth. 6) Our policy, clearly stated on our company’s public handbook, is that we expect team members to work no more than 40 hrs/wk. We monitor the hours of each team member and when we see a pattern of overwork, we correct it. I cannot identify in our records a time when someone has worked significantly above that target for more than a few days unless by their own choosing, which we highly discourage. 7) Professional development is always an area of focus for our leadership team. Each team member receives an annual learning budget to use at their discretion, we regularly bring in experts to do workshops on various topics identified by the team, and each department is provided a team learning budget. As much as possible, we staff team members on projects that will maximize their growth in their practice area (be it programming languages, technologies, UX, IA, consulting, etc). 8) In 2019, we made changes to our leadership structure for precisely the reasons the reviewer identifies: to increase clarity of communication, transparency, shared decision making, and accountability. We have greatly improved and are continuing to see ever better results. As a leadership team, we work with an excellent leadership coach to help us grow and this coach is also available to anyone in the company at any time. 9) Turnover is a natural part of any industry but it is especially prevalent in technology. I believe my point above (#8) contributed to the turnover of a few individuals in 2019 but I also believe that we are in a much stronger position now. We have put in place annual reviews of our hiring practices, turnover, and diversity metrics to further improve in these areas. Further, we have publicly released our career paths and are working towards publishing our salary bands. Again, I would like to thank you for sharing your feedback, I am thankful for the opportunity to directly address your criticism. And, if you would like to further express concerns I would welcome you to reach out, I would be very happy to talk openly. To future applicants to Tandem, I would encourage you to ask your hiring manager to connect you with me. I would be delighted to spend time with you to discuss who Tandem truly is in terms of our operations, culture, values, and future growth. Sincerely, JC Grubbs, Founder and CEO, Tandem