Management lives in a disconnected, fairy tale land.
Let’s start with transparency. As a start-up you would think that management would believe in such a concept, however their version of transparency is a repackaged take from what you see at typical 1000+ employee companies. There is ZERO transparency on pay, career pathing, state of the business, and even small things such as celebrating employee’s promotions and letting other people know when your coworkers’ roles have changed.
Next, CaaStle already had a culture issue to begin with and the pandemic only exacerbated it. But when you ask management? We are all doing a great job at living the CaaStle core values (yay!). CaaStle’s culture of “accountability” quite literally means throwing people under the bus. From upper management to mid level managers there is a tendency, actually more like a constant need, to micromanage every single detail. Employees are not empowered to feel confident in their work output nor their decisions. Innovative ideas are not *actually* welcome, just cost-cutting ones. The internal communications problems are HUGE. Strategy is messy and constantly changing, which inevitably wears down employees. And last, if you don’t have a masters degree from an Ivy League forget about ever being taken seriously in here. The elitism is REAL.
management still has a hard time defining roles –and in such a large organization this creates the perfect environment for micromanaging all the while punting off work in an endless loop.
As far as actual workload goes, most of the daily tasks are either a) being automated or b) offshored to the India team. All other big “strategy” projects and decision making is punted off to the company’s clients, so what we do all day everyday is either nothing or not at all related to the job we signed up for.
On benefits: like everything else, poorly managed “people” team that does everything but care for its people. Not once has anyone from that team reached out to others to take a temp check, gather feedback, etc. When you do proactively reach out with an issue nothing is done about it. Pay is on par with retail but not tech sector (as it should), healthcare sucks, and no 401k matching.
Word to the wise: if you are considering a position at CaaStle DO YOUR RESEARCH. Reach out to existing employees in the department and get their take before accepting.
