Fantastic Company. Great Product. Great People. Weak CEO.
Pros
Nearly every employee is kind, friendly, and eager to support each other on any project. Great benefits. Fantastic environment for millennials. Fast track career opportunities for women in their 20s or 30s. Great fit for younger women who loved their time in a sorority. The company vibe is sort of like a sorority sisterhood but in a K12 start-up company environment. Nearly every employee is highly accountable for delivering results. No dead weight. Best-in-class curriculum that is easy to sell and blows the doors off anything McGraw Hill, Pearson, and HMH has to offer. The product truly has a positive impact on students' lives and teachers love it. The CEO's head of staff who is responsible for HR matters is very organized and gets things done.
Cons
Leadership urges employees to strike a work-life balance but then pushes staff to meet tight deadlines. They struggle to execute the work-life balance they promote and some employees struggle with emotional stress due to the demands of the job. Baby boomers and older Gen Xers need not apply! Males and older employees are discriminated against and often talked down to by the CEO to demonstrate the power young millennial women can wield over men and older women. Career success is driven by how much the CEO likes you on a personal level. The CEO has an ELA background and struggles to connect and relate to the math side of the business. The founding CEO, Larry Singer, applied an aggressive approach to grow revenue at an incredibly rapid pace. Unfortunately, he handed the CEO position over to an immature leader with a weak finance background upon stepping down. She promptly promoted all of her friends in the company, pushed out people she personally disliked and gave out lots of raises. She was unwilling to accept the sales team's sales forecast during her first year as CEO and produced a sales forecast nearly double what the sales team projected. She then hired lots of new people assuming the company would hit her projected sales numbers. The company was forced to lay off 1/3 of the employees after a six-month CEO-driven spending binge followed by sales numbers in the ballpark of what the sales team forecasted, which was 50% less than the CEO's forecast.