Pros
I’m struggling for a response here. There are some great people still here. We try to support each other, even under tough conditions, but we are all living in fear. The only reason I’m still here is because I’m scared of the current job market.
Cons
I don’t think our leaders know what they are doing. I know that sounds harsh, but let me give you just a recent example. The business has seen its share of challenges, and there is a budgetary shortfall. What would you do in this situation? I might start by eliminating C-suite bonuses, stop renting a mostly-empty office, or maybe stop having our CEO supercommute to that empty office every week. What did leadership do? Instead of downsizing our space to match reality, they doubled down, renting a new office, spending who knows how much on new furnishings for it. There are several dozen new standing desks for the non-existent office staff. When that doesn’t work, the next step is to layoff employees (most of whom were working in the office) for the third in three years. Now, I actually agree that layoffs are an unfortunate, but necessary, method of cutting costs. However, our leader again seems to have botched this. There seemed to be no communication about who to lay off or why. It honestly feels like anyone who spoke up was targeted (this would explain why those in the office seemed to be targeted). It’s either that, or our leaders did not understand what their employees did. I don’t know which is worse. Whatever the motivation, we were left with multiple critical roles unfilled. For example, I’m not on the leadership team, but I think we might need someone on staff who understands Salesforce, Cvent, or our data architecture. What’s the solution to our expertise shortfall? Leadership quietly decided to hire back many of the laid off employees as contractors. Higher salary but even less job security. I applaud most of my former colleagues for refusing to come back. The trust has been broken. As Catalyst used to advocate, culture trumps salary every time. The culture at Catalyst is broken.