Newsela Reviews

The company has an interesting product that is being run by a management team that could get an award on how to destroy value. Anyone who has been at this company for more than 1 year (including the CEO) deserves to be fired immediately. I have never seen a CEO with such complete incompetence in any business in any industry. The CEO suffers from narcissistic personality disorder with an extreme Oedipus complex. No one with any intelligence lasts here because they challenge his views, highlight his lack of understanding of basic business principles, and cast a spotlight on his general lack of qualifications to be CEO. Instead he promotes incompetent people around to strengthen his moat of stupidity around him. He is a human resource departments’ worst nightmare – he is openly racist and misogynist – not sure how there haven’t been more complaints of harassment. They actually had for a short period of time transferred HR away from the CEO (what a relief) to only give this back to him – it’s like asking the fox to guard the hen house. The CEO takes no accountability or responsibility for anything, and most C-level executives spend more time trying to figure out how to shirk work than actually do their job. I don’t understand how these Tier 1 investors allow this idiot to keep destroying shareholder value. The only person more incompetent than the CEO is the chief product officer – I don’t think anyone at the company understands what this guy does or why he is in his position. My advice if you’re (1) competent or (2) not an old white male – stay away – you’re better off elsewhere.

I used to think that the company simply lacked product leadership and engineering leadership (I won’t pass judgment on the interim CTO), but actually this company is lacking a capable CEO. No one wants to admit it but the product is stale and neither the Chief Product Officer nor the CEO knows what to do. What’s worse is that they don’t actually want the input of the people talking to community or those talking to customers. That’s very sad because the CRO and CCO are smart and know what they are doing. The CEO is too insecure to accept that he’s in way over his head and prefers to behave like a petulant child. He is clearly more interested in perpetuating the myth and keeping his job rather than doing his job. You can understand, and possibly forgive, mismanagement from someone who’s never been a leader or had previous success, but what’s worse is that from an HR perspective, Matt Gross makes Travis Kalanick (CEO of Uber) look like the Dalai Lama. Harassment, intimidation, and bullying remain rampant and are clearly driven from the top. I think the new Chief People Officer is his lackey and enforcer of careless and reactionary policies. If you’re trying to constantly intimidate your employees, asking them to move their desks so you can see what’s on their screen, and constantly eavesdropping into meetings and looking over shoulders, you’re really not going to create a positive working environment or engender the support of your employees. Sadly, the company clearly missed the opportunity to right the ship when it could. At this point, it’s simply not worth waiting around for anything to be fixed, since I don’t believe management or the board really care to fix anything. I’ll go the way of the several smart, capable people before me – leave the company and find a place where my views and contributions are valued and where I can make a difference. Matt / Lori – please also don’t post any BS about how you would have wished that I would have come to talk to you before positing this review. No one believes any of these positive reviews, and we all know that they have been planted by you. I would urge Glassdoor to re-confirm these reviews, because I don’t believe anyone in the company except them could have painted such a rosy picture. If these are actually authentic reviews, I would urge these employees to please state their names so that I can I understand what I am missing, or better yet what substances they are taking to perhaps feel this way. I can assure you that there are several people like me that would love to have this euphoric feeling of an alternative reality. As you can appreciate, I won’t be sharing my name since I am certain it would result in retaliation. But don’t worry I won’t be, and suspect many others won’t be, around for long….