Pros
The individual contributors, OG Leafly employees, and occasional free lunches.
Cons
Hey all you cool cats and kittens! First, leadership at Leafly is SUPER sexist and racist. Try to get a member of SLT to defend themselves against this. Their responses are hilarious, if you have the darkest sense of humor ever. Tim Leslie (CEO) literally dressed up as Indiana Jones, whip and all, and cracked (pun unfortunately intended) some incredibly distasteful “jokes” at an all company meeting. But the problems are insidious and pervasive, they aren’t always the caricature pageantry of poorly conceived corporate desperation. They’re far, far worse. Hypocrisy at its most aggressive and toxic - they spend A LOT of time talking about “diversity and inclusion” yet fire all of the women and people of color after devaluing their contributions or stonewalling them from participating in decision making. They spend a lot of time harping on transparency but create elaborate circuses called “lunch and learns” where they enthusiastically lie to their employees en masse. Even more upsetting - you’ll hear a lot about a “Leafly Family” from SLT but foster one of the most toxic leadership cultures I’ve ever encountered. The only “family” at Leafly consists of the employees who support each other, and that word has no business passing the lips of anyone making decisions there. Most of the Leafly “family” is no longer there. How about their product offerings? Leafly has been allergic to making meaningful improvements to their client experience for years. Imagine being one of the poor suckers who ate the meat lovers pizza at Joe Exotic’s zoo and then watched Tiger King and realized they ate dumpster sausage. That’s what being a client of Leafly must be like. They lie about their data, their traffic, their email lists, their audience size, you name it. Pretty much every competitor in the industry has better product offerings. If you work at Leafly, you will either be in a position where you need to lie to do your job, or you’re being lied to all the time. Probably both. Clients beware, there are so many better places to spend your money and actually turn an ROI. Leafly offers GREAT perks and job security… if you’re a white man who worked at a certain golf company. Like - next level, they’ll pay you exorbitant hiring bonuses and inflated salaries even if you’re completely useless. ESPECIALLY if you’re completely useless. They’ll literally lay off women just so they can fill their roles with Another Golf Bro. Their hiring slogan should be “Want to be part of the problem? Join us!” If nepotism was currency maybe Leafly would have been able to offer all the employees they laid off more than a measly (and heavily stipulated) one week severance pay during an economic crisis with no end in sight. Now let’s talk Layoffs - because it’s literally the most consistent and predictable parts of the “culture” at Leafly. In my tenure there I had witnessed three. I was part of the last one, along with 90 of my incredible, hardworking, talented colleagues and friends. About a month and a half prior, it was 55 (likely more, there were a lot of involuntary departures in the days following). To blame such inexcusable business failures on an international pandemic is beyond unconscionable. Leafly leadership has been making some dumb decisions for years and the worker bees have been paying the price - but the new guy swooped in and said “hey, looks like you’ve got a mess here, let’s Amazon-scale all the things we’re doing wrong *AND* sweep it under this convenient virus-shaped rug. Feel free to The best part about Leafly was the passionate, talented, hardworking contributors relentlessly swimming against the tide of bad management and toxic leadership culture to hype up this incredible plant. They’ve all been laid off and screwed over. Here are three things I learned over the past month - there are more tigers in captivity in the US than there are roaming freely in the WHOLE WORLD, my local grocery store gets its toilet paper shipments on Sunday evenings, and if you aren’t an over-confident white dude passionate about golf and mediocrity, there’s no place for you at Leafly.