Great work-life balance, but digital org is toxic and cliquish - Product Design Thrivent Employee Review

While I’ve heard overwhelmingly positive things about Thrivent’s corporate culture—colleagues who are respectful, supportive, and mission-aligned—that experience doesn’t translate to the digital division. Thrivent’s digital org operates almost like a separate company, spun up to drive digital transformation. Unfortunately, it’s dominated by leaders with consulting backgrounds who often lack real, hands-on experience in building and scaling digital product teams. The result is a lot of emphasis on frameworks and operating models, but very little follow-through to make them work in practice. There’s also a strong current of unearned arrogance. Many leaders act like they know best, despite not having the experience or track record to justify that confidence. They often talk down to their own or other teams—especially those outside the digital org—and frame legacy teams as threats or blockers rather than collaborators. This not only fosters division, but also reveals a lack of true partnership skills and self-awareness. The culture can be surprisingly toxic—but in a quiet, “Minnesota nice” kind of way. Teams rarely address conflict directly. Instead, frustrations fester and surface through backchannel complaints, private Slack threads, or vague alignment meetings where no one says what they really mean. Rather than fostering transparency and collaboration, this culture rewards avoidance and blame-shifting. Cronyism is also a major issue. Many leaders and mid-level managers come from the same handful of consultancies, financial institutions, or Target, and they tend to hire and trust only people who fit that mold. If you’re not part of that in-group—whether you’re a long-time Thrivent employee or someone from a more traditional in-house product background—it can feel like you’re constantly being questioned or sidelined. To be blunt, working in Thrivent’s digital org can feel more like navigating high school cliques than building great products. I cannot wait to leave.