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Thank you for these encouraging comments. I'm so glad to hear of your positive experience with your teammates and how they make you feel. "Feeling like family" is a big part of what we aspire our culture to be, so, it's exciting to hear you use those terms to describe your time here.
In response to your "Con" comments, I appreciate your candid feedback on these various points. I'd sincerely welcome the opportunity to talk to you about these points, if you'd be willing (please just email or IM me and we will definitely find time to connect soon). If, however, you're not interested/ comfortable with having a dialog, then, here are a few thoughts to address your concerns below.
1.) As to the topic of sloppy execution (and the impact it has on support), I'll start by saying that despite our good intentions and hard work, your observation is definitely true at times and I'm sorry for the suffering it causes on the front lines when that happens. Imperfect as we may be, I can tell you we are constantly striving towards improving our execution and I believe it's fair to say we've come a long way in this regard since our even more chaotic beginnings. But, to set expectations fairly, we are a small company competing with some of the biggest giants in the world in an incredibly fast paced industry. Therefore, as a business strategy, we must continue to prioritize being more agile than our competitors, which unfortunately does at times yield "sloppier" execution.
2.) This is a good segway to your comment about not being "a start-up". It all depends on how you define that term. We are indeed 5+ years old with over 170 people and definitely would like to think of ourselves as a real company. However, relative to our giant competitors who have hundreds of thousands of people and are decades old, we are definitely a start-up. Reading your other comments, it seems like opinion that we're "not a start-up" is tied more to the topic of upward mobility, titles, and the impact and voice folks "at the bottom" can make. Let me try and address these topics in the next section below.
3.) First, let me open by saying I'm sorry if you feel or have experienced a lack of upward mobility. Those are issues we don't always get right, but, I can assure you I personally care deeply about. Upward mobility is a case-by-case topic related to individual performance and the needs of the business (so hard to address in detail in this forum). That said, in general, if we see someone working hard and performing well, we honestly do strive to create new/ upward opportunities for them, be it in their existing teams or even with a different group. Unfortunately, sometimes the needs of the business don't align to create that upward opportunity. In those (I'd say relatively minority) cases, we'd rather help that person amicably leave the company on a non-rushed timeline to find that upward opportunity, then suffer with us if we can't create it for them. As you may have heard me say in various settings, I believe everyone should have the opportunity to do the BWIML (Best Work In My Life), be it here at Republic (ideally) or somewhere else (if we can't provide it). If your observation here is personal to you, I'd once again invite you to come chat with me about it.
4.) As to the topic of "no one listens" to the "people on the bottom" and your last comment about senior management stepping on peoples toes and purposely excluding other folks with expertise....I'd start by asking if the problem you feel is more about a lack of opportunity to voice opinions, or just disagreeing with the decisions after your opinion has been heard? The former is something we are constantly and aggressively trying to improve and I promise you that if you have an opinion on something about the business, I'd genuinely welcome hearing it. Please just reach out. If it's the latter, while I can't promise your opinion will always win out (even if heard), but, I can commit to explaining the rationale behind decisions that you don't agree with.
-- Chris Chuang, co-founder & CEO
