On the surface, Pond5 seems like an ideal work environment but sadly you don't need to pick very deep at all to find patterns of inequity and injustice for women and non-white employees. This is just a partial list of what I witnessed in my time at the company:
Longtime CFO Tom Crary has been known to play the juvenile game of rating women's physical attractiveness, asking people in the lunch room to assign women scores of 1-10. If this had taken place in a room full of men, it would still point to a broken company culture; the fact that it repeatedly happened in front of women in their own workplace, and never led to any concrete action on the part of HR despite numerous filed complaints shows how deeply Pond5 devalues women.
Gossiping (in a public space, once again) with a group of men about a female colleague who had recently quit, Crary said she didn't have much to offer, but did have nice "assets." His all-male audience laughed out loud. He not only rejected but openly mocked expense reports for women's team building outings, and bullied the employee who submitted them.
Tellingly, the company yet again took no measures to remedy the situation or address the underlying issues that allowed it to happen in the first place. In spite of this well-documented pattern of behavior, Crary continues to be a key decision-maker on salaries, raises and bonuses. As someone with inside knowledge on compensation, I know that Pond5 paid women and men unequally for identical work.
This acceptance of bullying and inequity penetrates into the middle and lower ranks, and is endemic in the culture of Pond5's middle management:
Example 1: a music director was given to frequent racist outbursts, shouting "these [expletive] Russians, these [expletive] Ukrainians" and ranting about how "these [expletive] people from Eastern Europe" are all fraudulent. At the time, this Director sat next to Eastern European colleagues in the office and managed a team based in Eastern Europe. When asked to stop by one of his Eastern European coworkers, he treated the situation is a joke and continued to do it.
Example 2: a product director once casually mentioned the "n word" at the lunch table, with no consequence. This person managed a team with non-white employees.
It is clear that in each of these cases the c-levels and directors have priority over lower level employees and that they can reasonably expect to walk away from these situations without facing any consequences or serious pressure to moderate or change their behavior. When confronted with this, Pond5 will tout its "global" team, which includes highly underpaid team in Prague and Dublin.
In short: if you are a woman, and especially if you are not white, be wary of accepting an offer from this company. While at first sight it may seem like an exciting and creative organization, you will be underpaid and consistently made to feel like you are worth less than your male counterparts. If you complain even in the most professional of ways, you can be sure the side of the higher-up will be taken.
