Firstly, to anyone considering working at Remine - I recommend you don’t. There are countless other technology startups in the DC area. Don’t waste your talent with a company that won’t let you shine.
To put it simply, Remine’s problem is poor management and lack of focus.
Management over-promises to the customer, doesn’t manage customer expectations, and doesn’t clearly communicate expectations back to the folks at Remine, so the products inevitably under-deliver. The amount of data Remine has is awesome - the opportunity is there, the market is there, and the company has (or had) the talent. The talent recommends ways to improve the products and company culture. The management ignores recommendations. The talent sees the writing on the wall and jumps ship. See Spot run.
I don’t need to repeat the issues echoed by other reviewers about the high school cliques and gossip. They’re true and it’s annoying.
Some people blame Remine’s problems on employees not speaking up. That rhetoric is echoed by management, of course. It’s ironic that anyone would say so on Glassdoor, considering it’s a place where people are speaking up. Perhaps people are more vocal on Glassdoor because management has become unapproachable since Mark became the CEO, and the following problems get waved aside like they’re not real problems:
- The company has had several layoffs in the last year. After each layoff, the management says something like, “this is the last one. This is the team we want to move forward with.” Then there’s another layoff or mass firing. People spend more time talking about how scared they are of losing their jobs than doing their jobs.
- The org chart is embarrassingly flat. The majority of the company reports directly to one person, with a smattering of weak middle management who serve essentially no purpose. There’s not enough time in the world for that one person to address everyone’s concerns, especially in a timely manner, which means unhappy people stay unhappy.
- There are many people with job titles that include the words Senior, Director, or Manager, who are wildly unqualified and have little to no skills that warrant such a job title. “Peter Principle” aside, it’s a much larger portion of middle management than you’ll find at other companies.
- As a result of some people in management roles being laughably inept at their jobs (read: blissfully unaware of what their job duties actually entail), processes simply don’t exist. This is an example life cycle of a new feature at Remine: Management has a fun new idea. Management tells the PM. The PM tells developers to drop what they’re doing and deliver this feature. The feature gets developed and delivered. The feature is a surprise to literally everybody else at the company, including QA, marketing, sales, and customer support.
Is it any wonder people walk on eggshells? Is it any wonder that people drink heavily at the office on company time?
You’ll hear people (including management) refer to these problems as “startup growing pains.” These are not startup problems. These are Remine problems.
