Worst experience in my career, including my paper route as a kid - Anonymous employee Hint Water Employee Review

To all senior marketers: please consider the following before taking a role at Hint. I worked at Hint for two months before deciding to move on after an incredibly disappointing experience. You will not receive a budget, which will limit your ability to plan. Your boss will be the CEO and the COO. You cannot have a meeting without both of them present. You must ask a lot of questions in the interview phase about how they will determine success—and even then, it’s still a shot in the dark. I was told on my first day that two teams would report to me during the interview process… were no longer under my umbrella. I have written proof. Even if the entire organization is reporting to you, beware: You will not be empowered to make decisions. There are no company meetings or updates from the CEO. Decisions are made via email. Time is spent on useless tactics with NO big picture thinking. You often are the last to know of changes—even your direct team will know before you. The CEO does not like decks (even 10 slides or fewer), long emails, or attachments, and she will rarely meet with you. But… she wants to approve everything. Yes, even email copy folks. When she does meet with you, she will be on her phone throughout most of the meeting. Also, the CEO's knowledge of marketing strategy is limited, causing unclear direction. The structure created is to throw stuff on walls and see what sticks, which will not sustain growth. Measurement, strategy, and testing are all limited, and appreciation for all three is nonexistent. The CEO will change direction, and she will listen to others before having a direct conversation with you. She will attack you via email without a conversation. She will already have a point of view formed before seeing your work, hearing your thought process and research. A good leader is diplomatic until they understand the full issue. She will tell you one thing then five minutes later, she'll tell you to do the opposite. Then, she'll blame you for not listening when the real problem is that she doesn't listen. She will also talk poorly about team members in front of other team members. My biggest advice is not to believe the online hype about this company. And if you want to succeed you will need to stroke the CEOs ego to stay on her good side. She is not ready to hear what her company can do better. The hours are atrocious, and you only get ten vacation days. And you’d better show up before 9 a.m., no matter how late you stay. Creative resources are incredibly limited, and you'll get one maybe two days to turn creative. And they think this is a "long time." There is no design review process (even if you try to make one) and everyone has an opinion. This environment is impossible to succeed in. How about a brand? There are no brand guidelines to follow. Hint has a product. The company has yet to develop a brand. Also, executives also have no patience for ramping up a team or for you to build out a high-performing creative team. Leadership does not realize that a) they don’t have a brand and b) building a consistent brand takes time. Creative is a discussion on what works/doesn't and a design review process allows for better creative in the future. They will not understand this. Collaboration is not a priority if something isn't working. And constructive feedback is non-existent. In eight weeks, my team of two: delivered a company messaging framework for both product lines, on-boarded a design firm to build a brand book and briefed them, resourced an agency to do a proper segmentation, built a social strategy and implemented it, on-boarded a new production agency, built copy dos and don’ts, built a brand voice and personality framework, built a customer journey (CRM) strategy and began executing against it, built a new blog strategy and began executing it, built out an org chart that identified major gaps in the org and interviewed loads of people (no recruiters), built a new social media measurement dashboard (results lifted 100%+ in my 8 weeks—credits to my team—but leadership credited the improvements in performance due to "other things happening"), created 10+ seasonal campaigns (all performed above benchmarks), and more. I was told numerous times I was not executing enough without specifics after working 12+ hour days. They focus on the bad (which takes time to fix) and not applauding the team wins. They didn't want to hear my roadmap to ensure there was alignment on my marketing vision. They saw no value in how these "strategies" could give them substantially more revenue. And the CEO convinces herself that your ideas are hers, which I think she genuinely believes. The team is junior—fantastic, hard working, and all will have excellent careers. I liked every one of them. But they need direction, and senior leaders will not empower you to give that direction. If you make a decision, the CEO & COO will quickly not support you on it. Leadership has enabled the young team to back-channel decisions made if they are not favored. And it works. Experience, strategy and actual results will not trump favoritism. It happened numerous times in my short employment. This doesn't create unity within the team. Building a team-oriented culture will never exist in this dynamic. Leadership's job is to bring teams together not tear them apart, and I realized that I couldn't do that alone. Also, this place has an incredibly high turnover at all levels. My first week two people quit. One employee had been at Hint for two months, and they other had only been employed for six months. After someone puts in their two-week notice (including myself), they ask them to leave immediately. This proves their unprofessionalism. Then, for months following she will talk outwardly about how they were not a fit. The COO is the only sensible leader, and he has a great marketing sense. Slightly tactical, but a good guy. However, he is also in the weeds with little time to be int he weeds, causing churn and making it impossible to succeed. In my nearly 15-year career where I've had nothing but success at big AND small companies, I've never seen such unprofessionalism. Hint is a 12-year-old company and they are no longer a startup. They need to start acting like it. If they don't change, they will continue to have a difficult time retaining top Bay Area talent, because there are so many environments that empower employees and encourage teams to work together.