Leadership remains in power while the company continues to do poorly. There was another layoff that happened in February where about 25-30 people were laid off. The first major layoff was in May 2017 where 40 people were let go. They COO's consolation message was "it won't be as big a layoff as last time", while they dismissed employees back to their desk to sit around and wait to see if they get called into a room by their manager to know if they got laid off or not/watching our coworkers/friends be escorted out.
The following day they were happy to announce that after the layoffs, the company was now profitable for the first time since its founding. They then announced bonuses and raises and promotions were coming (this is their attempt to try and keep people from leaving). It's truly sickening to watch the leaders of this company celebrate something like this through a means in which it directly affected the livelihood of other hard-working people. We get sometimes hard decisions need to be made, but the fact that they have to be made this often at this company is a huge red flag (read: incompetent leadership!).
The CEO does not know how to run a tech company. I used to believe his intentions were to really impact higher-ed, but he's really just in it for the money and cannot grapple with his own ego that he is not doing his job well and needs to step down. They've restructured the company countless times since I've been employed there, and each time with little-to-no results, which lead to another restructure. Again, probably normal for start-ups but with this frequency and lack of actual results = Red. Flag. You can continue to restructure and hire new people to try to save this business. It will never work until you realize the reason for failure is due to the leadership. Look at all the rest of the negative reviews, there is a common thread, and it's not just bitter employees complaining. These are true and accurate grievances of people who've worked here, so the COO (who has maybe been there 6 or so months and has no context or history of this place) can comment and keep justifying/explaining things, but that doesn't mean this company is succeeding.
Look up the recent articles written about Civitas Learning on reputable higher-ed news platforms. Long story short, they're bad. But if you still don't believe the negative reviews here, go find those articles and read them. And all the positive 5 star reviews you see that were posted on the exact same day - something is fishy there, and likely someone at the company trying to save face and getting employees to say nice things.
There is career growth for very entry-level roles, but beyond that there is very little room for advancement. People Ops says ad nauseam they are working on career pathing/salary structure. That has yet to happen. This company will get away with paying you as little as possible for as long as possible until you fight back.
All in all, trust the negative reviews. Again, these are not bitter employees, they are ones who've watched incompetent leaders fail over and over again and are warning others to steer clear of this place.
