Sinking ship - Anonymous employee Element Science Employee Review

Connie (senior manager, people and talent) was a dream to work with. Although ultimately it didn’t work out, she was incredibly personable, prompt, and supportive during the recruiting process. Connie made me feel seen, and supported. Great first impression of Element.

Just wish I could work with her longer!

• Individual contributors: There are some (50%) solid individuals who really are the ones holding this place together. Friendly, helpful, and just enjoyable to be around • Middle Management: A few good ones still left. It’s just unfortunate that they are effectively hamstrung by leadership. • Redwood City specific: Good parking, OK office culture, clean bathrooms, snacks, coffee, bagels every other Wednesday, decent walking paths. • Diversity: If that is your thing then you will be happy here. • Company events: The CEO treats the org to some great events and its the only time everyone can mingle together. Genuinely a really cool perk. • HR puts on some fun location specific holiday activities. Costume contests, trivia, potlucks, white elephant, etc.

• Company Culture: Performative and shallow. Honestly, someone deserves an Oscar. There are 5 tenants that we have, a few are the antithesis of what they should be. They are as follows… Be You: Be the you we want you to be, Not the “you” you actually are. Be Curious: But not too curious because then you will be labeled as nosey and insubordinate. Turn Breakdowns into Breakthroughs: Clean up the bad decisions that Leadership made because their egos prevent them from running ideas by the SMEs. Crush it Every Time: We expect you to be okay with being overworked. How You Show Up Matters: Don’t complain about all the issues and problems. Keep your head down and comply. • Pay and Compensation: Pay; Mediocre, Stock Options; Decent; Sick time; At least give us separate sick days instead of bundling them with our PTO. • Silos: Traditionally silos appear between departments (vertical Silos). Here at Element Science we suffer from horizontal silos. The leadership team is either disconnected from the realities of their department(s) or refuses to communicate company direction with their department(s). In the end it manifests in a way that the teams and SMEs performing the work are not privy to the details they need to perform their jobs in an effective way. The most apt description I can come up with is: It feels like I am working for a multinational conglomerate, but we have ~100 employees. Splitting our organization between San Francisco and Redwood City doesn't help either. • Career development: Super inconsistent across departments. Some leaders know how to play the game and lookout for their people, helping them move up. Other leaders refuse to play the game or feign ignorance, hamstringing their employees career growth. • Hiring: There is this obsession at Element Science with hiring more and more managers. Oh, we have a problem? Guess we need another Director! Wait that didn’t work? Guess we need a VP now! At one point we were sitting at a 40/60% split managers to individual contributors. • Indecision & Scope Creep: Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is a decision by committee. Big or small, it’s exhausting. Want to do continuous improvement on your process? It’s going to take months to get a change approved. Then at the end of the review cycle you get hit with “it would be nice if we also included X”. Then another month of review etc, etc.