ProfitWell Reviews

Hey - this is PC (CEO of ProfitWell). I wanted to address some of your comments directly, because I think there's a big disconnect on what actually happened and what you heard through the grapevine. Also, some of the things you brought up you may have only seen the beginning or end of a situation and with a not-so-charitable interpretation I can understand why you may characterize some of these pieces in the manner you did. Regardless, you very clearly did not get the impression we intend for everyone at ProfitWell to get nor did you feel comfortable bringing some of these things to get clarity or answers to what actually happened. Ultimately - that lack of comfort is 100% on me and the leadership here. While you may disagree with reasoning or tradeoffs we made, there's no excuse for you not feeling comfortable asking questions to at least get clarity, so I'm very, very sorry. Sincerely. And even though you're no longer at ProfitWell, if you'd like to discuss anything, I'm always available. That being said, I think it's useful to take a step back and address some themes here rather than nitpick on every comment you made, because I think a lot of this is related. My intention is not to take away from the apologetic sentiments I just expressed, but to give you a bit of a different perspective, especially since this is public. If for some reason you feel I'm just combatting what you said (definitely not my intention - I think your intentions are good), please contact me and we can edit this together. For a lot of reasons - both obvious and not - we don't have pure, synchronous knowledge sharing about things that happen inside ProfitWell (although I wish we could all just hook up to one brain to make that easy :)). We do try though, with a culture of feedback and radical transparency, but we're moving quickly so sometimes we fail by not explaining what's happening enough or worse, feeling like we explained fully, but still end up missing key pieces. Knowing we won't be perfect in communication is why we designed ProfitWell for information flow. We have a flat organization that allows anyone to question anyone else about the why, what, or how of a situation. Obviously there are limits - an individual's HR file- but barring that there is nothing at ProfitWell that is above explanation. To be fair, the explanation may take a bit or may not be readily available, but that's only because of prioritization rather than trying to suppress something. We have so many avenues for this - weekly AMAs at all hands, memos, a web of managers you can go to if you don't feel comfortable going to someone else, feedback form, and a leadership team that will get on the phone day or night to clear up anything and everything. We also spend a ton of time talking about this with the team, because it's not the inclination a lot of people have, especially if they come from a more corporate environment. I mention all of this because I feel like some of the things you said could have easily been cleared up through a discussion or a question. Now you may not have liked the answer or the tradeoff we made, but at least you would have clarity on some of your assumptions. Also, you clearly didn't feel comfortable doing this, so I'm not harping on you - just pointing out the norm we try to go for and so many people here thrive in. Take for instance the Canada Goose Jacket bonus. You mentioned, "Even for their top performers, they didn't give them bonuses: they gave them a Canada Goose jacket with the PW logo on it. Did they offer to give a cash bonus in replacement for that? No." What you described wasn't the intention of the program (a cash bonus) and not exactly what happened. We felt like it was a good idea to have what some companies call a "President's Club" but make that more than just salespeople. We wanted to do something different where we bought this group a thoughtful gift that was branded and a good representation of them being the "Team of 2019". We also took them on a ski trip. It wasn't intended to be a cash bonus, but more of a token of appreciation - something they likely wouldn't buy themselves. We didn't mention, because it's on the border of their HR information, that these folks also received either stock or cash compensation, as well. We very much work to "load up" top performers, but don't always mention this publicly because it has to do with their individual comp. In this vein, some of the other comments you made, fall into this HR category where it's hard to give transparency, let alone proactive transparency. For instance, the fast food comment you made about our CPO (Facundo) - "...he judged others for eating fast food and commented on their "energy levels". We have interpersonal conflicts at ProfitWell, because every single person here - including you - care deeply and sometimes that care manifests itself in a way that causes conflict, especially with strong personalities. These are a small amount of situations, but it tends to happen when you have a lot of caring people in an organization and you unleash them on a mission. Most of the time they're handled amongst the people involved, but sometimes HR or even I need to jump in to help mediate, because we're all humans and sometimes our emotions get the better of us and we just need someone to help with clarity. In the fast food instance I was actually brought in, because this involved a member of the exec team, and I spoke with all the parties involved, including two witnesses to the interaction. Here's a breakdown that you probably didn't have full transparency one: - Someone who reported to Facundo consistently commented on their energy levels in the afternoon and how they felt sleepy after lunch. This was a comment that this person made several times to Facundo and several other people around them across a number of weeks. - Facundo being their manager asked if they wanted help figuring that out after they expressed the sentiment again. This person opted in and said yes, that they would like help having better energy in the afternoon. - Facundo then asked a number of questions - how much sleep they got, when they best worked (night owl vs. early bird), etc. One of those questions was, "What did you eat for lunch today?" (a day they had mentioned their energy levels were low). - The person responded with a "cheeseburger, fries, and large regular coke". - Facundo then suggested that eating that type of food for lunch was going to hurt their energy levels and maybe they should eat something else while saving the cheeseburger meal for dinner. - This person took offense, went to PeopleOps, and then I got involved, as well. - For context, the witnesses corroborated what I just outlined, as did the parties involved. Now in this instance, the individual who took offense believed that their boss should never comment on their personal diet choices. As a large human, I can understand that sensitivity. My issue though is Facundo was trying to help them with something they asked for help with and even gave them options on when to eat the burger, fries, and coke (for dinner) that fit into their energy level concerns. Is it his fault they took it to an extra level of negative interpretation? I could see how you could somehow justify that view, but it's not ok to characterize this as if Facundo just openly started commenting on someone's personal choices. He didn't know this was a sensitive area for this person (and I don't think it's appropriate to assume so given the person asked for the help), but afterward he stopped discussing the category with this person unless they brought it to him. To be clear, I share this not to refute your comments, but to give you some more clarity into the whole story. It wouldn't have been appropriate to publicly talk about this (at an all hands for instance), but if you had this specific concern (if the person came to you, you heard it through gossip, or you were a witness yourself), I would have been more than happy to give you as much detail as I could into the whole story without violating the privacy of the individuals involved. At the very least I could calm some of your fears. I think this is a really important point because your characterizations about Facundo (our CPO) or other decisions that were made just aren't the whole story. I wouldn't be as worried, but some of the implications you're pointing to are extremely problematic and generalizing. Do I blame you? No, because ultimately, it's on me and the organization as I mentioned above, but we try very, very hard to be as open and transparent as possible and I'm just sorry you didn't feel like you could have that conversation or ask these questions to clean up your not-so-charitable interpretations of situations. If it wasn't clear - we have a zero tolerance policy for toxicity, bullying, misogyny, racism, and the like. These things are just inherently wrong (and don't produce good results at all). Another big area I want to reply to is having a high performance culture with leadership that cares. At ProfitWell, we follow the mantra of servant leadership, which in a nutshell means anyone in a management position *serves* their team, dropping anything and everything to help them when needed. This is why I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say people were bullied or punished when they took time off. We have never in the history of the company denied someone's vacation request. We've never even added friction to someone's vacation request unless it was logistical and we needed to figure out how to backfill while they were gone (and this was just to figure out logistics, not to change their plans). I have dozens of examples where someone had a death in the family, a physical or mental health issue, or even just life getting in the way, and we said "go...we'll figure it out....you need your head dealing with that." This is to the point where some people have been out for entire quarters to deal with their personal stuff. I get into arguments with our lawyers who specifically want "family leave" or bereavement policies and I refuse to do it, because I don't want our team thinking they have to ask for permission to break a policy to take care of themselves and their family. You also mentioned something about someone being punished for not bonding well. I can't for the life of me think of a situation where someone was told they weren't bonding enough with the team. Furthermore, the leadership team reviews every review with every manager before they go out and I've never heard "bonding", "culture fit", etc as a justification for or against someone. We just don't believe in fake culture like that. With bonding it's more we set up a lot of opportunities to interact with your team members outside of work and if you take them, great. If not, that's ok, too. More generally we also work within the lifestyles people want to lead. It's perfectly ok to have a classic 9-5 mindset in certain roles at ProfitWell. In other roles, that's not the expectation and we're exceptionally clear about that (and compensate accordingly). In these roles, it's not to say you're working too many hours, but it is to say that you'll have more responsibility that ends up with some heavier weeks followed by some lighter ones. We're trying to build something great from nothing. That takes a lot of effort and we're very open about that, especially in terms of treating people like adults - you need time, you need resources, you need help, you need perspective - all you have to do is ask. If it's time, help, or perspective - the expectation is that you get it ASAP. If it's resources, sometimes there are tradeoffs and we can't get something to you right away, but you should know that so we can adjust things to accommodate. I'm left thinking maybe some of this is related to the communication point above where we're just not talking enough about this mindset. I know a good portion of the team knows this, because it comes up in conversations, but we can certainly do more to make sure you know this is how we think about the world. Ultimately, I want to be clear that I'm not presenting the above as if you're wrong, because this is your perspective and ProfitWell is responsible for creating an environment and culture where you get the intended perspective. We clearly failed here and that's completely on us. One of our principles is to get better every day and with reviews like this we certainly do. I'm just sorry that you ended up getting a different impression and experience, so sincere apologies there. I know you don't work here anymore (according to glassdoor), but if you want, please come and speak to me (or another member of the team you're comfortable speaking with) so we can get you more context or help. We're not going to be perfect and you may disagree with tradeoffs and decisions we made, but we at least can get you clarity. I care deeply about every person who's worked at ProfitWell, even if the relationship didn't end on good terms, so if there's anything I can do to help, please reach out. P.S. In full transparency, we don't game reviews on Glassdoor. Like most review sites, those positively inclined don't always thinking about posting anything, so we do run campaigns from time to time asking team members for reviews, which we implemented a while back when team members asked how they could help with recruiting. When people come to me personally asking about a negative review and mention their experience at ProfitWell is different and what they can do, I do encourage them to post their own review, but don't tell them or ask them what they'll write.