Marketing role - Marketing Eatwith Employee Review

The best part is the amazing team. The product is social and cool.

The management changed and not for the better

Some employees have real skills and talents; it's a shame how management doesn't see this to their benefit.

Lacks strategy, reactive: Eatwith's growth strategy, if they had one, doesn't prioritize bettering their product with tools to support clients and their businesses. They've been on a cyclical wheel of garnering hosts to make the 20% service fee that guests are charged with—even if a host has done all the marketing for their event. Eatwith then loses host participation because hosts have soon learned that the product barely serves them. The company also uses "visibility," which they don't have and make accessible to their users, as a way to sell their product. Their strategy right now is to copy competitors rather than making features and perks unique to themselves. Top-down, internal micromanagement: Instead of listening and supporting employees, particular managers interrupt conversations, disregard feelings, and make people think and feel that every task is urgent. This looked like numerous unplanned calls, using meetings for numbers that are already documented, and speaking in a competitive tone about themselves and "their work" rather than how the entire team contributed to such outcomes. In addition, using the term "start up" isn't a reason to encourage an "always-on" culture and doesn't excuse people working abnormal hours on every device they own. Unprofessional, external micromanagement: Eatwith managers try and manage the business of high-earning hosts—including what to serve, what to do, and when to host to quickly boost internal company news/numbers and eventually short-term monetary gain. As much as the company prides itself on letting hosts have complete freedom, particular managers have their hands in hosts' business, especially if they're making the company money. For example, I wouldn't want to host my food experience on a company site that has a manager texting me about moving my workshop timing—if I asked for a consultant, I would've at least worked with one that called themselves as such and made the relationship/service clear. Substandard organizational structure: This is a company that refuses to call themselves for what they are, "a tech company." This is an *online service* that is supposed to support people in having their cooking classes, dining experiences, and food tours booked. However, as much as management says that they're working on offline experiences and selling "community," I have yet to see a dedicated in-person, experiential events team and a product that supports host to host communication. On top of this, their marketing team is bigger than their product team—you can forget having a requested function for a user completed in less than six months. Mediocre hiring approach: As mentioned in a previous review, Eatwith hands interns the marketing reigns to save money. If you pay attention, you'll see brand misalignment in their outward-facing channels i.e. Instagram and Facebook. If you want better results, hire people with actual experience. Lack of organization: Tasks and project information can be found in six different "project management" tools: email, Slack, Asana, Confluence, Intercom, and G-Suite document comments. There is no standard project management tool in this company and it's dependent on each manager's working style. As you can probably infer, this slows people down.