SynapseFI Reviews

It's almost a tragedy to see how the fate of this company is going - what legitimately was a billion-dollar concept is being destroyed due to the tyrannical, egotistical CEO who treats the company as his serfdom and imposes unnecessary requirements that he himself ignores. This is a man who never had a boss, and thus, has absolutely no concept of what is required to be a good one. This is a man who doesn't believe in providing training guides to employees, rather thinks that new employees should be able to find the information themselves, and then publicly erupts and berates them when their understanding of the product isn't to par with his after a month on the job. During my tenure as an employee, almost all of the engineers with past experience and/or degrees left the company, to be replaced by recent boot-camp graduates with limited experience. Although some would spin this willingness to hire diverse employees that would never be candidates for more established companies as a sign of the company’s divergent process, I would argue that being in conjunction with the lack of training, mentorship, tools or support to do the job well, this stems more as a ploy to hire cheap labor who can be taken advantage of due to their lack of experience. I’m also not convinced that the CEO doesn’t hire new grads in order to maintain a sense of superiority regarding his technical ability compared to his staff. It appears that this might be changing due to recent C-level hires, including a technical lead. For the sake of everyone, I hope that the CEO actually is giving them the autonomy and support to successfully do their jobs. The company culture is at best non-existent and at worst toxic. In retrospect, I recognize that the morose faces and lack of any acknowledgement by coworkers when I started were symptoms of collective unhappiness. Innovative thinking and collaboration was discouraged unless you’re one of a select few – you’re expected to come in, do as you’re told, and not talk. Don’t expect any feedback or constructive criticism, or any acknowledgement at all unless it’s a curt request to explain your error. In the race to automate as many “best-in-class financial products” as possible, the focus is so much on the automation part that they seem to forget that it’s people and not robots working behind the scenes. Also, the product sucks. Concerns with quality are routinely ignored in order to pursue the shiny new thing which isn’t even done right.

Writing this review is not my intention to damage the company’s reputation but to lay out some facts about this company and what it can do to improve. This is my fair and honest review of Synapse while working there for nine months. I want to start off by mentioning that we held companywide meeting where the CEO addressed the negative reviews on Glassdoor. He conveyed the message that if anyone felt negatively about their time in the company, they should express those feelings and work with the company to further their growth. However, this is not often the case as people are afraid to speak up due to backlash they may receive. I was not set up for success in my position nor did I receive any support. I was constantly discouraged and lost confidence in my ability to work. Eventually, I was let go with no warning, no 30 day improvement plan or anything else. HR seized my work laptop and badge within minutes of talking to the CEO. The whole prcocess made me extremely uncomfortable. There is a reason why the negative reviews on Glassdoor about this company is consistent, and that it because it holds a lot of truths. I personally felt that the culture was extremely lacking and my lead, the CEO, did not follow through on his word and worked with me to further my growth at the company. I asked how I could improve and the CEO said that I was doing my job terribly and if “I couldn’t do it myself then he would handle it.” These are very discouraging things to hear so you can imagine the effect it has on company culture... The CEO was my lead and I needed his support, but when I couldn’t perform, I blamed myself for the shortcomings. However, hindsight is everything. I was so stressed and worried about performing that I was blinded from seeing what was in front of me the entire time. The CEO is manipulative and uses this to his advantage by hiring inexperienced people and treats them like they’re disposable. Looking back, communication definitely goes both ways and all of my attempts at communicating with the CEO was avoided. It is also important to note that the company is currently horizontally structured so everything relies heavily on the CEO. We have no managers to help facilitate the workload, so things can feel extremely unorganized at times. Lastly, HR is a joke. No exit interview took place so I had zero chance to describe my experience at the company. HR wasn’t concerned about finding out what happened , but was more so concerned about getting me to leave immediately. Horrible experience... nobody trusts HR. CEO talks a lot about being self-aware and wanting to improve culture. However, I hope he can take his own advice and become self-aware of the negative impact he can have on the people working at the company. CEO needs to improve culture, but more importantly, he needs to understand that it starts with him.