Continual management incompetence - Senior Software Engineer The Washington Post Employee Review

I've never worked anywhere with a worse corporate culture as it relates to the competence of management, how the company treats employees, and the attentiveness of ownership. There's clearly no plan, which led to multiple candidates for the top editor job bowing out, according to reporting in the industry press. The pattern is that management makes bad decisions that do nothing to stem losses -> they announce pending changes (a reorg, layoffs) without providing any concrete details -> employees worry and speculate for weeks or months about the details while management refuses to answer questions -> people lose their jobs. Middle managers never have any context to offer on these decisions, and seem mainly at pains to emphasize that they're not responsible. Will Lewis in particular has shown he has no ability to lead the Post out of this mess. There haven't been any concrete changes to the business since he arrived, and no one understands what he's getting at with this "third newsroom" idea nearly a year later (though to be fair, I don't think he knows himself). In light of this, it's particularly galling that he's refused to meet with employees for nearly nine months to answer questions. He also dropped the ball in a major way by not getting on the same page with Bezos re: presidential endorsements early, losing us hundreds of thousands of subscribers as a result. Beyond incompetence, Will has clearly shown he doesn't have the ethics to do this job. He tried on multiple occasions to intimidate reporters and editors at the Post from writing about his legal travails in the UK, a line no publisher should ever cross. Additionally, it seems clear he engaged in criminal behavior during the aftermath of the UK phone hacking scandal; more will likely come to light on that during the 2025 legal proceedings. The idea that, as was reported, he told Scotland Yard he destroyed millions of executive emails because he thought that a former British prime minister might hack the company defies logic. Lastly, it was infuriating to hear Bezos tell the NYT Dealbook conference that he's always ready to open his wallet to help the Post, when that hasn't actually happened for years; instead we've endured multiple rounds of layoffs, with no major initiatives or acquisitions. The endorsement debacle clearly showed how checked out he is as an owner; again, how did they not have that conversation months of years prior? His other business interests, which he clearly prioritizes, are harmed by his association with the Post, and it's important to him that he stays in Trump's good graces, as evidenced by the way he's flattered him since the election. At this point he should just sell the paper to someone who cares and isn't so compromised.