Pros
My coworkers are awesome, talented, and kindhearted. I genuinely enjoy collaborating with my team. I feel like I got ten years of experience in right out of the gate due to Backcountry’s tendencies to reinvent the wheel and restructure every few months. There is absolutely no institutional knowledge and people are constantly laid off and quitting, so your job description quickly becomes outdated as you pick up extra responsibilities to stay afloat. You get a lot of experience building out multiple strategies because Backcountry can’t stick with a plan for more than a few months, and as soon as the next shiny objective catches the CEO’s eye then its time to derail and chase it… or else. Overall, my time at Backcountry made me a much more competitive and experienced candidate for my next role.
Cons
The future of the company is uncertain and years of poor business decisions made by the executive team have compounded into a classic downward spiral. I lost respect for the CEO as a business leader after she berated the anonymous feedback received from the employee surveys during an all-hands meeting. A CEO that cares about creating a safe culture would not say the things that she did, especially in front of the entire staff. I don’t see things getting better at Backcountry anytime soon, if ever.