roboboogie Reviews

After nearly a decade of working in private sector childcare, I thought I had seen it all in terms of crazy jobs. Oh how I was so wrong. Let's start with just 2023. In January leadership laid off 6 employees, including a manager I reported to. The layoffs were done extremely poorly with very poor communication to the wider team, and with seemingly no real plan for who would take over what. I remember having a meeting with my coworkers in which we were being told that essentially we needed to suddenly focus on sales (our roles being very *very* loosely related to sales of any kind). We voiced our concern with the lack of clear definition & objectives for our role shifts and a higher up TEXTED my coworker to tell them to "stay in your lane". Mid meeting. Fast forward to summer 2023. Another round of layoffs, and my hours were cut in half. Around the same time, I was going through communication training with Robo's third party HR with another coworker over some conflicting communication & working styles (I requested the mediation). While the training was great and the coworker and I both benefited from the intervention, it was clear that I now was highlighted as being problematic for speaking up. In September I had my annual review. I was told I was not meeting role expectations, called names, and was told I was a disrespectful employee. The aftermath of that review was a huge mess. My boss decided to use our 1:1 as an opportunity to lambast me for being "ungrateful" about the review that they had put "so much effort into" (it was full of spelling & grammar mistakes, mind you, some of which they corrected live on the call with me while reading it). My review was finally redone by the CEO in a much more constructive format, without my boss present. After all of this, I assumed the worst was over. Robo picked up some small gigs and a new retainer client and things looked good. I was brought back on full-time. Myself and my coworkers felt cautiously optimistic about the state the company was in, and many of us slowed down on our job searches. There were some hints that our feedback to leadership was perhaps finally getting through, and some small changes were made (as well as a TON of promises that more good change was to come). I shared with the company that I was pregnant, and it seemed as though Robo would finally move forward. The reception to my news was quite sweet and I felt like I was back on the good side. In December 2023, yet another round of layoffs took us all completely by surprise. 6 more of us were laid off, myself included. At the time I was 7 months pregnant. The shock was indescribable. Literally the week before I had been having a conversation with HR about scheduling my maternity leave, which was literally just weeks away. The layoff disqualified me from Oregon's FMLA, and left me in a precarious position for seeking new employment. I voiced my extreme concern with the position I was being put in, and was essentially told I wasn't allowed "special treatment" because I was pregnant. I literally begged them to let me work through the next six weeks, even at part time, so that I could qualify for maternity leave. They flatly refused. Now it's nearly mid-January and the shock still hits me at times. I understand that I was outspoken, as an employee. But I worked hard, and the company did benefit from having me there. I worked well with clients, got great feedback from both team members and external teams I interfaced with, and made numerous attempts to upsell clients and bring in leads for the company. I'm not sure I'll ever truly understand how they sleep at night with the guilt I hope they feel at discarding me so heartlessly, or how they even justified making the decision to lay me off in the first place. As I get further away from that time and the incredible stress that built up over the 18 months I worked there dissipates, I can't help but thank them for what they did. I'm truly a better and stronger person because of what happened to me, and I know my baby is better off not having me work somewhere so incredibly stressful.

Instead of listing potentially subjective judgment of my time at Roboboogie, I’ll just list actual events that occurred: - New tools/processes researched and pitched to improve Robo’s workflow were not taken seriously and either... 1. “relayed to leadership” and then crickets 2. declared to be too expensive, even if it would have elevated Robo to industry standards 3. or I was told to spearhead implementation on a free trial of the tool, with no adjustment to my other responsibilities - Meanwhile, new tools pitched by Leadership were implemented without soliciting ideas or feedback from the greater team, even if they were more expensive, more difficult to use, and drastically altered established workflows - Leadership actively discouraged former employees from reaching out with better opportunities for their old colleagues (would rather hoard employees and keep you at 70% of industry standard salary than let you move on to something that will actually pay your bills) - Members of Leadership who are bad at their jobs, difficult to work with, or emotionally volatile (in one case costing an IC their job based on hurt feelings) are not reprimanded and instead the organization must learn to work around them and treat them as a “missing stair” - Underachieving industry standards on all fronts: Tools, salary, & severance. I was given three days to negotiate severance instead of the standard 21 - Leadership feedback reviews are not anonymous Overall, I cannot in good conscience recommend working at Roboboogie until serious changes are made internally.