Pros
* Pay is competitive * Unlimited PTO actually gets used here * Fully paid insurance is pretty good
Cons
This company has a systemic problem that is directly leading to huge turnover right now that the CEO brushes off as, "They just don't get what we're doing, they were let go because of performance, they weren't a culture fit." This couldn't be farther from the truth: They are fleeing rampant prejudice and discrimination. The CEO and CTO lead the charge in this brogrammer organization. The new CTO directly threatened employees' livelihood when objections to a chaotic reorg announcement were raised and called "emotional". He ended the meeting announcing this abrupt change with a threat: "Look, Recharge is moving forward into the future, and if you're not willing to come into the future with us, there are plenty of people who are." He doubled down on that notion a few days later: "Let’s keep today’s discussion pleasant and objective-focused. I have a strict no-jerk rule and thinking back to my career when I’ve been most emotional regarding organization decisions it has been managing jerks out of the company. If this discussion gets out of hand, I will dismiss the other parties of the meeting" The CEO can't seem to help himself during Town Hall meetings held every other Friday and has to spew ignorant, tone deaf nonsense. For example, a few weeks ago he thought he'd get a laugh telling an "inflation" story about someone he knows getting interviewed by the NYT after leaving a Chipotle because a burrito was $9 now. That individual turned out to be a multimillionaire, and he complained about "Twitter investigators" discovering this and starting a "cancel culture about him". He seemed to be expecting us to commiserate with the poor, persecuted millionaire and seemed oblivious to why people might react negatively to such a tone-deaf interview. Won't somebody PLEASE think of the poor millionaires?! But it's gotten worse. Since this turnover has increased and we've lost our DEI officer and CFO, he has taken to responding directly to "AMA" questions in these meetings about these problems in awe-inspiring displays of ignorance. Here are some direct quotes from Oisin, CEO of Recharge, at our last Town Hall: “Oisin, I’ll throw this back to you: What efforts are in place to increase diversity in our leadership roles.” “[long pause] Yeah. Totally…umm…[pause] You know, I think the… [long pause] This one’s hard, right? I’m just gonna be straight up, like…[pause] it’s like hard enough to, like, hire somebody for a role, in some of these senior roles, you know? Ummm, that’s just the reality, right? So, like, you’re always trying to get the best person possible? Ummm, and I think…[pause] a lot of times the – and maybe this is the answer people don’t wanna hear, but…[pause] that’s, that’s just the reality of this environment that we’re in, right? Ummm, you know? Like, my uh…[chuckles] my sister-in-law is, is now the CTO of Fox. And she just told me, like, diversity candidates? They’ll [unintelligible] an extra 200k, for like an executive level, right? So that’s what like…that’s what like publicly traded companies are doing, where it just basically they’re like ok we know we have to have this on paper, so we’ll pay up for it. Ummm…[pause] so it’s just a very hard place to get diversity candidates at a certain level. I think, you know, our best bet always with this stuff is like how do we promote, how do we develop, you know, diverse candidates internally? Because that’s the easiest way to do it? Ummm…[pause] and so, yeah.” This is such a textbook excuse it has a name: "The Pipeline Problem". Google it and read any of a few hundred articles debunking the concept for what it really is: a post hoc rationalization of bias and discrimination. “Does Recharge have any plans to end merchant relationships with merchants that go against our values, for example if a merchant sells products that are racist or homophobic or transphobic?” “Yeah, totally. And so I think this is one I’ve struggled with, right? Cuz like we used to live in a, you know, when…[pause] I would say even a decade ago we had this kind of society of like…[pause] if you had a stack ranking of principles, freedom of speech would probably be like the top principle that a lot of people would say, like, makes up, you know, a democratic society, right? Ummm, and I would say we’ve started to move away from that, you know – and I’m a very liberal person by nature [laughs], so like, but I, like, I feel very uneasy when we start to silence other people, right? Ummm, you know…[pause] and you know this is just like…[pause] my own experience, you know, of like, my grandparents and stuff in Ireland? And like, going thr—them going through a revolution and them being silenced for hundreds of years is like…[pause] it doesn’t feel great when one group is like hey this is th—what’s appropriate? And anyone who doesn’t fall into that can’t talk, you know? Or they don’t—they can’t be supported. And I just think it’s a slippery slope, ummm…[pause]. Now, does that say, like, hey…[pause, swallow] what are the values, what are the things that we support? Right, internally? Ummm, and what do we want to propagate? And I think I think about that a lot? And, you know, I know that we had this kind of conversation, ummm…[pause] you know, I think, uh, two years ago there was o—you know with the election, there was a customer, I’m not gonna go into the customer, that was very much against a lot of my beliefs, and I think a lot of other people’s beliefs – and that’s when we started to do the donations every month, right? We started to donate, you know, the $10,000 a month with the idea that, like, hey, the money that we’re making from some of these people, why don’t we give them back into the things that we care about, you know? Ummm, and why don’t we let the Recharge people vote on that and push that. So, that’s the way we’ve handled it so far. Ummm…[pause] but, yeah. I—I don’t like to be the arbitrer [sic] of like…[pause] who gets a voice, who gets supported." It's all about what our company values...which is just money. As long as we're making money off of it, you're free to sell KKK robes and hoods with our platform. We'll just donate a tiny fraction of that money to the NAACP and pat ourselves on the back. Don't even get me started on trying to say not allowing someone to use our platform to spread their hateful ideologies is in any way equivalent to imperialist oppression of an entire people for "hundreds of years", or the deliberate misunderstanding of what "free speech" is and how it doesn't obligate anyone to enable others to spread their reprehensible beliefs. Again, a classic excuse here is a known logical fallacy: the "slippery slope" argument. Earlier in the meeting was another gem, coming from someone in HR: “I’ve seen organizations offer higher referral bonuses to bring candidates from underrepresented groups into the company. Is that something the company is open to?” “So for the first question, around referral bonuses…I’m just gonna be honest and say I don’t – we, I shouldn’t say I, because this is a collective effort – we don’t know if that is the right approach to Recharge, and I think…I think there’s work to be done first before we make um…just granular decisions like that. But I do want to talk a little bit about what we are doing.” Those things we're doing: Listening circles, ERGs, Affinity Months. "Members of these communities said they wanted more support," so this is what they get: token efforts at "inclusion", but denial that anything about their hiring practices or treatment of people here has anything to do with the complete lack of diversity and surge in people leaving (spoiler: It's only going to get worse as you double down on these behaviors). Beyond this deep rot in the company culture, the engineering department is hopelessly broken. Daily deployments require a dozen or more people to spend half of their whole day (every day) to make it happen. Everything in their stack is barely functional and hopelessly buggy but it's full speed ahead on new features, tech debt be damned! In short, I've worked for a lot of companies that marginalized the BIPOC community, that pushed out women or older employees...but to quote someone else who left this year: I've never seen anything as egregious or blatant as I've witnessed at Recharge. I'm still in awe of the things this CEO willingly said on recorded video calls available to all employees.