Pros
Coworkers are amazing and honestly the reason anyone on the customers team sticks around as long as they do. For the most part, Elation finds a way to hire fantastic individuals with hard work ethics. The equipment used is pretty nice. The product and mission make every ounce of work meaningful. Most of the people at Elation really care about what they do and what the product provides. These people were a joy to work with. Truly impactful work and product. Benefits were pretty good for a start-up. Health insurance, vision, dental, etc.. There were commuter benefits too.
Cons
**I've never worked in a more toxic, unsupportive environment** - There are toxic individuals who have too much influence on other people and shape these people's perception of others. - The lack of support my team received from upper management, middle management, and even our own boss was unsatisfactory and could not have made me feel more unimportant. - This company has no idea how to properly undergo and execute managerial changes. - Fixes are not prioritized correctly, irrationally so sometimes. Goes to show how disconnected decision makers are from customers' needs. - The burnout is REAL, work/life balance isn't much of a balance. - There were at least a couple of people in the office that did things to me personally in a non professional manner that made me highly uncomfortable. These actions were not welcomed and in my opinion not appropriate in an office environment. - It was disappointing how Elation neglected its customers sometimes - Professional development on the customer team's side is lacking and opportunities are sporadic. Managers have been dishonest when it comes to telling their employees how realistic some opportunities are. I remember being told I couldn't grow at Elation due to the pandemic. That clearly wasn't the issue as other people were able to move up. The blatant dishonesty and weak excuses were a major catalyst of my frustration. Then that "frustration" became the reason why I couldn't grow. The whole situation was a mess and wasn't managed properly or honestly whatsoever. Pretty on par for Elation unfortunately. - Going off that last part, some managers are just straight up dishonest and unfortunately kiss up to upper management so much that there apparently isn't a problem to be seen. Upper management was totally out of touch and would repeatedly prove this with poor decision making. - Raises don't happen even when asked for. There is no negotiating. Some asks are met with dishonesty. - Tier 1 management was aggressive and at times very unprofessional. - The turnover at Elation was incredible. It's like the company never got bigger or smaller, and like 20+ people left during my 15 months. If there were a line graph of the number of Elation employees over time, the graph would be comparable to the topography of Kansas. - Other teams' decision making would severely impact the team's workload. This was a continuous negative experience. The support team is not the delegation team. - Training material for new hires was severely lacking. - The CXO should not touch anything, ever, unless they can fix it or they start to hold themselves accountable for their mistakes. They should work on being less condescending towards employees that work for *their* company. There are many, many more things I could say about this place. Honestly I feel like we got off to a pretty good start. The toxic team environment following a managerial change was a total downer and sucked away the great things, but at the end of the day I was ultimately disappointed knowing that: - pushing through a toxic work environment - thoroughly answering customer's emails with personal messages instead of sending macros with links to help center articles and calling it good - always saying “yes” to taking on new projects and more hours (working with Impl on lab activations, customer success on communication to customer for fixes, and taking on an extra hour of urgents without being compensated for it (not the biggest of deals, but it would have been the right thing for Elation to do)). - caring about our customers so much so that they even addressed their support tickets directly to me - throwing the calendly link out there like I was Oprah - making screen recordings for our customers, even creating a folder for everyone on the team to use - wanting to grow and even shadowing new positions while still maintaining main responsibilities to the absolute fullest - covering my urgent shifts without a laptop for a week as my keyboard was being fixed - training new team members constantly (I helped train a total of 6 support team members. That's an entire team's worth of employees.) - doing the most tickets on the team *every week* (ok, like 97% of the weeks) for 10-12 months straight. This happened without one single complaint from a customer and I swear if there was a CSAT score I would have had the highest percentage during that time, too. and my personal favorite: - being someone almost everyone went to whenever they had a support related question somehow doesn't mean *absolutely anything* in terms of professional development or increase in compensation, even when asked for. Agree to disagree. Elation's management should never wonder why their employees are visibly (or non visibly) upset given the above. Treat your employees better. All of the "wins" in the world don't mean anything if you aren't properly rewarding employees.
