Power to the Few - Anonymous employee Athleta Employee Review

1.0
10 Oct 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Bring your dog to work Beautiful surroundings Some genuinely nice coworkers

Cons

Basically everything else. TERRIBLE CEO (Let's call her IL DULCE) Our current CEO for the past several years has been the absolute downturn for Athleta. She's killed the culture, the spirit, any semblance of process or accountability, and she's inculcated a mean-girl undercurrent where if you don't fit in, you're laid off in an inconspicuous manner or you're given no opportunity for growth. She's vitriolic, rude, outwardly aggressive, and above far else, displays a rather disconcerting lack of style when her main M.O. for Athleta is trying to be more trendy and cool. She has no consideration for work-life balance, forces people to work past deadline according to her random, subjective whims, and preaches lies about how we all need to live the brand when there's A) no time to, and B) there is no "brand" to live anymore. CULTURE Toxic. Toxic. Toxic. Lots of talking behind other people's backs, no support for your team, blaming of others, too much brown-nosing to the upper management and CEO, and far far far too much influence from GAP corporate where our company doesn't even stand for anything anymore. We used to have a work/life balance. Now we can't work from home and there's so much work and not enough team members that work basically never ends. MANAGEMENT •Composed of unapproachable, disingenuous, unsupportive, patronizing, consistently contradicting & TOXIC team of know-it-all's who become threatened the moment anyone beneath them shows any amount of evidence that they might know more than they do. (Note: this is not exclusive to just my department). Positive reinforcement is mostly non existent. If any kind of a compliment is given, it's done so in a patronizing manner. Advancement is purely based on how far you're willing to kiss arse and where you rank on their nepotism-meter. GROWTH None. Get ready to move. I wish I was kidding about all this.

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Pros

easy work, good coworkers, good location

Cons

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3.0
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Pros

Very black & white on policies. You always know what is right or wrong.Operationally strong company that allows movement between brands. Decent pay if you advocate for yourself as an external, but don’t expect much once you’re in.

Cons

Company has changed direction so much since COVID. Seems like there’s no clear idea on who we are anymore.Senior leadership feels like a revolving door that only succeeds in spinning tires with no traction. We love to initiate something only to either sunset it months later or leave it in limbo(WellPro). The amount of stress pushed on stores to meet credit goals is absurd to the point it inspires unethical behaviors in certain stores.

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