Pros
*The people - a lot of nice employees work here, they desire to do good *Opportunities to build, create, and learn within your role
Cons
I didn't fully understand the phrase "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" until I started working at Tala. While "hell" is a strong word, the point is Tala preaches and intends to do good, but manages to stumble on its own untied shoelaces every step of the way. To preface, I think it's natural for a company to make mistakes, but Tala was exceptionally egregious when it came to this . First, I do hold Tala to a high standard because as a fintech company, Tala is responsible for the futures of folks in underserved countries, so the burden to take things seriously should be pretty high (it wasn't). Second, Tala makes so many of the same mistakes over and over again and is so actively consumed with its own internal drama that I think that the mistakes have stopped becoming acceptable and need to be called out. The root of Tala being a sloppy startup stems from something Tala does well: Tala does a great job of promoting a culture of "nice" and nice is generally a good thing, right? As a pro, a "nice" company attracts a lot of well-meaning employees wanting to feel good about their work. If you watch one video of Shivs' you'll see what I mean, Tala loves getting into the feels and talking about opening locked doors for underserved people. It's a "feel good" factory. However, over time I learned that "feeling" good has nothing to do with "doing" good... In a "nice" environment, a lot of well-meaning Tala employees came to expect a lot while outputting very little. Manager oversight and policies were so lax around the office, you could do whatever you wanted - clog your calendars with 30 min "syncs" that were simply coffee and cigarette breaks, go party your butt off in another country on a "work trip" (on the company's dime), let your dog go to the bathroom on the office carpet - whatever! Leadership had a, "Treat others as you wish to be treated" perspective about this, which is to say, leaders didn't want to be held accountable for any of their actions, so neither did anyone else. There were too many instances where leaders would be more interested in sorting out who was bunking with who at the company retreat (feeling good) rather than doing any sort of productive work (doing good). Over time, the leader on my own team went from holding consistent department-wide meetings to cancelling them outright. If I were to suspect why, when the meetings were happening, this leader typically worked off a meandering agenda where the first 30 mins were usually reserved for talking fluff, asking cutesy icebreaker questions, etc. There wasn't much of a point to these meetings and while it was this leader's job to build that agenda and give the meetings purpose, they preferred to cancel. This leader also appeared very uncomfortable with speaking in front of their own direct reports and would usually "encourage" (push) their direct reports to lead meetings. Abandonment of duty so prevalent that another leader in my department outright hired a consultant to do their work for them, effectively causing us to pay two salaries for work we didn't need in the first place. This consultant freed up this leader to, you guessed it, not produce any work, but instead book their calendar with personal errands and more coffee chats. As an employee it was very frustrating seeming leaders so disinterested in what should be really exciting, challenging work. Over time I came to see this culture of "nice" corrupted into a complete abandonment of duty and responsibility. That's why now I'd say Tala is a "nice" company but certainly not a good one. And in regards to the "moral" good Tala claims to do, after having worked there, I'd struggled to say Tala's net impact is good on its customers... - To conclude, working at Tala was the personification of the "facepalm" emoji. I've had some time to reflect on Tala and I'm still reeling from the experience and something has been gnawing at me to write this review to, at the very least, give a heads up about joining Tala. If you join, don't just "act" good, DO it. And keep lazy peers accountable, raise the bar. If you join, your job will be far more than the work you were hired to do. You're gonna have to figure out how to navigate around some landmines of personalities - good luck!
