Kano Reviews

1. Leadership is the worst I've worked for. The CEO was clueless (seriously don't know how the board haven't voted him out), would micro-manage everything, and would regularly go behind the backs of his better management in order to make changes based on waffle from his best friends in Silicon Valley. In public he would lyrically talk about our mission and disrupting tech, but in reality he was only interested in selling poor quality products, with minimal shelf-life. When as expected sales were poor, he would find fault in everyone else, but himself. Until he is removed Kano will not progress, although it's probably too late as the brand is now pretty toxic. A shame really as the mission was certainly achievable. 2. As creative as the team was, there was no-one with a pragmatic touch who could manage the expectations with regards to what was being produced. We would regularly user test with kids, but not once in my years there did we test with the people spending £100+ on the products. Regretfully a lot of what we made just wasn't going to succeed from day 1. 3. Much of the culture was toxic. The CEO would expect and praise staff who stayed late often working being into the ground. It was never really discouraged, and having worked for workplaces that encourage healthy working habits I can say with confidence Kano was shooting itself in the foot with its culture. Again, it just comes down to poor/amateurish leadership.

Due to the absolutely unplanned nature of everything the CEO and a very small group of senior leaders decide, the company has been in a downward spiral for almost a year. Employee morale is at an all time low, and the very few weekly employee engagement activities have now been made monthly. The CEO works very closely with two other senior management, neither of whom have any clue on how to run a business profitably, but definitely know how to say yes to the CEOs every word. The role of senior advisors is to actually point out when there are issues or if a business idea is horrible, but instead they go along with pretty much everything the CEO says. It doesn’t matter at the end of the day, because the company’s board is also the CEO’s friends and family which means that ultimately there is no accountability. This horrible attitude has seeped into the rest of the employees, and what was once a genuinely fun place to work has turned into a dreaded chore where everyone hates one another and constantly talking about each other behind their backs. The company is in dire straits and the CEO, as well as the aforementioned senior leadership, are to be squarely blamed. A lot of employees got their raises and bonuses cancelled after they were OK-ed by the CEO over the last few months because of financial circumstances, but when the CEO wants to spend 100s of thousands of dollars on a money sink, there is never any objection. Absolutely zero respect from the CEO to his employees, with constantly changing goalposts, no appreciation for work, and below market compensation. The CEO also has a habit of giving extremely vague directions, that others are expected to action upon, while he disappears for weeks on end and is unreachable. It’s an absolute nightmare working here, and a lot of top-talent employees are actively looking for other jobs and will be quitting soon. Lastly, a lot of positive Glassdoor reviews from November 2021 for this company, all within a week of another are only partly real, where employees were asked to write positively about the company in order to make it look attractive to potential candidates. So, please do a bit more research before applying for a job at Kano, and maybe reach out to current and former employees on LinkedIn to really understand what situation the company is in.