Pros
- A very interesting premise for a product that could potentially help in curbing climate change and meet global emissions goals. - Lot's of very bright people working at SPAN that are generous with their knowledge. - A great place for engineers, data scientists and clean energy experts to get into deep and potentially practical solutions.
Cons
- Extremely toxic working environment. Initially, the idea of a company started by Tesla expats seemed intriguing however, they've also brought with them toxic masculinity, berating of employees, over promising, under delivering, and a sense that you must be subservient to be valued and respected. The impact this has on employees is severe. People who are otherwise pragmatic, empathetic, and level headed, quickly adopt poor behavior and accusatory approaches towards direct reports and other teams to please executives. - Products and services over the last year have been announced with fanfare, only to quietly disappear. Videos of these announcements are readily available and continue to be used for recruiting purposes even though both the release dates and products themselves are no longer relevant. - Directors are not hired to lead teams but are seen and treated as individual contributors. The company is not transparent about these expectations and any discussion or attempts to resolve through appropriate resources are meet with derision and bullying. As for individual contributors; they are expected to be on call after hours and on weekends to meet unrealistic, uninformed goals. - Leadership team does not know how to build, structure and motivate a high-performing organization. There have been a long chain of exits from VPs to Directors, as well as individual contributors, who have been forced out for doing little more than the job they were hired for. Sometimes this has been characterized as "Not being the right fit" but has proven to be code for "I don't like being disagreed with". - The "Move fast and break things" mentality is alive and well at SPAN. Unfortunately, this means unrealistic expectations on employees, a product that underperforms and is essentially for wealthy early adopters of clean energy tech, with very specific use cases. - DEI is an absolute joke at SPAN and is seen as a means to check off a few boxes. The lack of a true People/HR leader is glaring, with the Chief of Staff (who has been at the center of a great many of the employee exits) poorly filing this role. Hiring more women and asians is great but, does not inherently make for diversity and diversity of thought is not in their vocabulary. Equity and Inclusion are almost not worth mentioning, as the definition, let alone the execution, is lost on the leadership team. For employees who may have a valid grievance that effects them emotionally and professionally; there is quite literally nowhere to turn to.