Backblaze reviews about "leadership"

No real deadlines (yes, it's a pro and con), weak leadership, and some teams spend $ like water while others are forced to expend inordinate amounts of energy to save pennies. At times the company is run like a retirement home geared towards employing obsolete empire-builders who have lost their edge years ago instead of focusing on running an effective business. This results in insane politics where industry-agreed-upon practices are tossed aside and some groups "own" technologies or processes they have no business running. Ignorant mob mentality in business social collab. platforms. Compliance is always a struggle because people only care about security or privacy if it's their own privacy. People who would have been fired from other functional companies continue to exist and waste multiple teams' time and energy. Equity compensation for most is less than worthless

Workload can be high at times, especially during peak periods, but teams usually pull together well.

Lacks transparency on changes, uncertainty in goals, slow to adapt to market trends.

It's a rapidly growing company and it can be hard to keep track of who's who. Better processes are sorely needed or processes are constantly shifting because of new team members coming on board. There is really no onboarding program other than "Go schedule meet and greets with these 20 different people." No training in company tools like Slack and GSuite and Jira. You have to be willing to dig in and figure a lot of things out on your own. For a small company, work can take a VERY long time to get done. Some teams are fast and reliable to work with. But sometimes work that has to go through other teams can sit and sit and sit with no explanation as to why it's not moving forward.

Newer leadership is decimating the existing organizational structure to purge the organization of "legacy people" for better/worse so they can install their own direct reports. Some practices, not unfamiliar to most experienced people, are unethical and borderline illegal. Leadership will retroactively tank reviews for high-performing individuals, citing personal opinions and erroneous data to justify reductions in force (and prevent future lawsuits). As existing employees watch their colleagues disappear weekly, they have zero psychological safety or motivation to continue performing well. Something that's eroding morale is seeing job postings for non-US locations with titles that match existing roles.

The place is poor with money and poor with leadership. Top Heavy. Execs spend lavishly on travel and other unnecessary expenses, then lay off workers to make up for their mismanagement of money. No accountability. No spine.

A few missteps have happened along the way, but I truly appreciate the level of transparency we get during our weekly company meetings. Our CEO consistently shows accountability—he’s fair, humble, and approachable, which is a rare combination, especially in Silicon Valley.

• Recent changes have been a bit challenging to adjust to, though they’re already showing a positive impact revenue-wise • Some transitions with new leadership are still in progress and will take time to fully settle • Hybrid policy is reasonable and well-intentioned, but full remote flexibility would be ideal for some roles