Amazing and dedicated employees driven away by CEO’s toxic, combative, and disrespectful nature.
Pros
I got to connect and work with most dedicated, smart, open, supportive, friendly, positive, driven, humble, and motivated group of people I’ve ever met. It’s a truly diverse team, and really good people. But less and less so now, because a lot have left and are leaving
Cons
- The CEO sets preposterous, unrealistic, and outrageous goals and KPIs for teams when (and especially because) he has zero knowledge about the teams’ work. He usually gets these unrealistic goals from some book or article he has read about some unicorn startup. - The CEO doesn’t trust the people he hires, he micromanages and dictates what teams should and shouldn’t work on, preventing everyone from doing their best work. - The CEO changes strategies on a whim. usually gets “inspiration” from some article or book he read about some successful startup and almost copy-pastes their strategies and teams are forced to execute. Teams are forced to pivot from strategy to strategy as dictated by the CEO. The company is not product-driven, growth-driven, customer-driven, or data-driven. It is truly the-CEO’s-mood-driven. - The CEO is very aggressive. His argumentative nature has derailed team meetings many times. He openly tells his employees that they need to be aggressive, he believes this is the only way to get things done, and if you aren’t aggressively outspoken like him, he’ll tell you “you don’t care enough” or that you don’t want to work hard or that you aren’t cut out for startup life. This aggressive culture that he’s trying to drive is very counterproductive as the people at abillion aren’t aggressive by nature and actually work extremely well together (without him). - The CEO thinks he’s smarter than everyone. This is very apparent in how he treats his employees, how he talks to his employees, and even how he talks ABOUT his employees behind their back (yes, quite unprofessional). He can be extremely contemptuous and disrespectful. - Because of all of the above, the environment has become toxic and anxiety-inducing. Very bad for your mental health.