What used to be a very open and honest working environment has turned into the same shady tech company that we're all unfortunately familiar with.
There was a huge round of layoffs right after Later merged with Mavrck. This put everyone in a pretty weird position mentally - there were folks we'd worked with for years that just suddenly weren't there anymore.
No preparations were made for these layoffs internally, so teams were left to scramble and pick up the pieces from losing so many people. Documents and tools used daily for tasks could not be accessed because the person who accessed them was let go. Just one example I can think of.
C Suite kept saying over and over, don't worry this was just a big unfortunate decision that we had to make so we don't have to do this again.
And yet...
Let me ask you a question: if your company was losing money at a rapid pace and you were struggling to figure out how to plug the leaky hole...would you:
1. Tell your employees you're going to take them to Mexico for a retreat?
2. Tell your employees the state of the business and provide an action plan on how to recover?
3. Just do no. 1 and forget about no, 2
If you picked 3, you could be a C Suite member of Later! In fact, the very CEO who made that decision decided to "step down" and let the CFO take over. If that doesn't scream "the board is super upset with you", I don't know what does. That old CEO is now the Chief Strategy Officer, which sounds entirely made up and likely is made up to placate this man since Mavrck is his brainchild.
This same CEO also posted in the company Slack requesting that employees essentially ask questions in a nicer way. This is after the layoffs and other changes that employees rightfully had a ton of very tough but fair questions. Can't take the heat? Get out of the kitchen. Oh wait, he did.
One last thing about this same CEO and the tough questions - in another Glassdoor review a former employee mentioned that the work/life balance is nonexistent at Later. This was brought up in a all-team meeting to which the CEO stated that if you want work/life balance, then Later isn't the place for you. That's what he replied in the Glassdoor review too. So, doubled down on "work/life integration". If that doesn't terrify you, I don't know what will.
The current CEO, Scott, was first introduced to the entire team in a meeting and...it was something. He was talking to the company trying to rally all of us to perform better, etc. Really pull through for the company! kind of bs. All while sitting in front of a literal wall of wine bottles. I mean hundreds of them neatly stacked in a built-in wood shelving unit behind him. With his RODE mic on a boom arm in front of him. Are we surprised this same person has dreams of producing a podcast? In fact, Later is cashing off the fact that a former contestant on Love is Blind works for them now, so heck - why not make another lame podcast about our business to throw in with the rest of the lame podcasts in this already-tired well!
I guess what I'm saying is we used to have some really cool, bright, and talented people at the top making difficult decisions but helping to push the Later product forward into new opportunities.
Now you have a bunch of Patagonia-fleece-vest-wearing east coast white guys who likely come from upper middle class upbringings making decisions for the company that benefit only those at the very top or earn some cool internet points.
Save yourself the headache of navigating the politics here - it used to be a really cool, totally unique-to-itself place to work. Now it's just like every other tech company.
