SunPower Reviews

Executive leaders have no industry experience, and it shows. They have continually made poor decisions and treated SunPower like a tech company rather than what we are. Because leaders don't understand the industry, they have made poor decisions about where and how to invest resources. They cannot adapt to fluctuations in the solar industry the way the company successfully did for decades before the current CEO (Peter Faricy) and his ex-Amazonions stepped in. They claim to be "data-driven" but ignore countless data that disagree with what they've already decided to do, so they forge ahead and bankrupt the company. The new CHRO, Todd Reeves, was brought in to make cuts and not support employees. Over the past eight months, SunPower has had several layoffs and multiple financial missteps. It continues to hemorrhage money because they don't know enough about the business or its people to effectively fix things. The executive leaders have slashed anything related to employee experience or engagement, and fail to communicate authentically or effectively about the company's decisions or difficulties. The mission is wonderful and attracts employees dedicated to the transition to renewable energy. Unfortunately, top leaders are only attracted to making money off that transition. They have ruined a once-great company by not learning anything about renewables or what it takes to power that transition. Several senior and mid-level leaders would be capable of leading the company out of this mess, but the CEO and others seem determined to wind the company down.

Leadership likes to create an impression that they want to hear from the employees, and all sorts of surveys have been done over the years, but in the end no meaningful changes really happen. Company overall has low tolerance on "failure", despite claiming to be an innovative company. As a result no one is willing to take risks. And it is hard to innovate without taking risks or if we are not allowed to fail. Company is constantly cutting budget and giving top down aggressive targets. Then project team gets bashed for not meeting targets, even though from the get-go the team expresses concerns that the targets are unachievable. When things don't go well, everyone does the "SunPower salute", i.e. pointing fingers at each other. Then the innocents get blamed and punished, and the responsible parties get praised and promoted. The residential sales & ops team tends to be short-term thinking and lacks empathy for other functions. They constantly undermine other groups with passive aggressive side comments, play politics, drive their own agenda and self-promotion. It is great if you are inside that team, as you get a lot of shielding and protection from the leaders, but is this really the kind of leaders you want to follow? And if you are not in their team and you have to work with them, then be ready to be constantly undermined behind your back. Many of them are insecure leaders who love undermining others as a way to hide their own shortcomings. Executive team tolerates and condones this kind of bad behaviors, thereby driving good people away.