Hack the Hood Reviews

Leadership. The new ED is an abusive bully, period. She has a pattern of abusing employees until they either quit or she comes up with a reason to let them go by "restructuring." The ED gives employees more work and expectations than are humanly possible for such a lean team, then berates employees for not meeting her impossible expectations. It was challenging to keep up with the fluctuations in mood. One moment you're great, the next she's threatening your job and telling you that "You are the most difficult person I've had to work with and the worst part of working here!" Nice. Working here was like a rollercoaster where one never knew what to expect on any given day, but rest assured it was usually negative. HR does nothing to help despite MULTIPLE complaints from staff, and it's unclear if the board is truly privy to just how volatile and abusive she was to the team. If so, shame on them. To say I was let down by Hack the Hood would be an understatement. The upside of being laid off is that I never have to be abused by this person again, and I already feel my happiness starting to return.

The company's co-founders have insufficient experience working with youth of color (and don't reflect their communities nor have experienced the challenges of the youth they serve), are blinded by their egos, have very poor leadership and management skills, and fully disregarded HR practices and follow-up to protect each other. That led to: - Committing continuous heavy mistakes for which they never apologized and always blamed others. - Arrogant and condescending behavior toward staff and students. - Disrespecting staff in private and in public (in front of other staff and students). - Mistreating the male staff. - Male staff submitting a formal complaint to HR about being treated disrespectfully and differently from female staff by the three co-founders. Female staff expressing acknowledgment of this mistreatment to HR - supporting their male colleagues' formal complaint. The CEO (a co-founder) ignored these concerns for nearly a year as they were linked to the other two co-founders. One co-founder left the organization, followed by the CEO (months later) and nothing was done regarding these complaints. - Poorly designed programs that promised exaggerated goals to funders and created extreme burn out of direct service staff that tried to meet the goals. Co-founders choosing to ignore advice from the direct service staff to reduce goals and focus on real outcomes. Always blaming direct service staff for not meeting unreal goals. - Focussing on rapid growth (serving more numbers without having the adequate capacity) was prioritized over the quality of services provided to students, in addition to the professional development and experience of staff. - One co-founder violated specific rules stipulated in the employee handbook but, her actions and consequences were dismissed by the CEO to protect her and allow her to continue to work in the organization. Rather than follow through with correct HR procedures, the co-founder received a "promotion" with a title change, being moved to another department. - One staff member was harassed by a board member (a friend of the CEO) but, the CEO never addressed it. A lot of immature, cowardly, and hurtful behavior was demonstrated constantly by the three co-founders.