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James here, CEO of Jobscan.
Since this feedback is quite similar to the previous one (and likely posted by the same person), I will repeat myself here:
Very much appreciate you spending the time writing this review. I've reflected on your feedback deeply.
I take full responsibility for the turnover we had earlier this year. Honestly, I wanted the company to accelerate so I thought it'd be a great idea to hire experienced lieutenants/executives from outside the company to do so. I was wrong. I was hands-off for a year to see how they'd do. A year later, management's salary expenses 2x and there was no revenue growth after 12 months. It was a negative ROI scenario. The sad part is these executives were likable people but the business metrics simply weren't met. They bonded with their teams so some folks saw them as "good leaders" emotionally when business performance was more important.
I learned that the current phase ofJobscan doesn't need executives from companies larger than 150 people. We should be promoting individual contributors from within who're excellent at what they do to become the leaders of the company.
And we did exactly that. Since we promoted our senior engineer to be the Head of Engineering, we have greatly accelerated our engineering output. This year, we launched the job tracker, chrome extension, continuous integration/deployment, created fast/slow lanes for much faster launches, rolled out SPA (Single Page Application), and upgraded the main dashboard, just to name a few.
In terms of innovation, the job tracker we just launched is an idea of our senior front-end engineer. And it is now a full-blown product on its own. We will also be commercializing another 10% project soon and have several machine-learning initiatives next year.
In terms of micromanagement - I prefer not to micromanage anyone as it takes my focus away from the strategy and more important matters. To be frank, yes, I did micromanage for the underperforming individuals, which didn't quite work out so well. At the end of the day, it was a mis-hire from the start and I take responsibility for it. We have since made the following changes:
1. Increased the hiring bar so everyone we hire is a fit and a high performer.
2. Set clear OKRs and goals and I have since being hands-off to give freedom for teams to excel.
3. Changed my mindset to be more of a coach instead of a manager.
In terms of trips, I visit Asia twice a year due to family reasons and I wake up at 6am and start meetings at 7am, which is 4pm PT. I don't schedule meetings past 7pm PT unless it's important.
Since the wave of turnover earlier in 2022, we have re-hired 10 more talented individuals across engineering, marketing, and data teams. 3 of which were former entrepreneurs themselves. Projects are getting done much faster and revenue continues to grow as the cultural changes seem to be making a difference.
Jobscan is profitable again this year and we're already seeing an accelerated traffic growth. 2023 is poised to be an even better year since the world will be in need of our service in this volatile times.
I encourage anyone seeing this to meet with our team without my presence. Have a real conversation with our team will offer you much more insights about our future.
