Atmosphere:
You could see the clear decline in morale and general feel of the office since the IPO back in Jan 2015. Yes, we are a public company, we need to be great and achieve greatness...but at what costs?
Some employees lived it well, doing their awesome job like always. Some are useless obnoxious pretentious childish slackers without substance colliding together to make the employees who actually deliver miserable.
During 1-1 or team meetings, company surveys, whenever you would have this type of feedback (“Lot of things are going on, this is how we could fix it”, "my manager does not want to listen about what is really happening" or worst, "my manager is reading the news and chatting all day being no help", "there is one employee who is definitely playing all of you when not coming into work”, etc…), no reaction. At all. Even better, managers do not have your back, they will take sides with the slackers.
There are way too many middle managers who seem to get off micro managing, dare I say, tiny dictators.
Then 15+ employees were fired in February 2016 (the wrong ones for 70% of them). They all woke up one morning, as usual, going to work and see their friends/colleagues. All of them were invited into an impromptu meeting early in the morning to be told they were fired then escorted out of the building. And yes, all their belongings stayed in the office, they had to book appointments to take them back. That was a nice touch.
After this, all of us "safe employees" attended an All Hands meeting for an update. Summary: you are safe now, it was a tough decision, do good work now, you might be next.
Internal mobility:
This is a fun one. Internal mobility is praised across all offices, you need to find out your next move. What's your next move blah blah because INTERNAL MOBILITY. Word of advice, be ready to kiss butt (literally and figuratively) and remove any inch of principles/values/conscience you may have. It will never be based on merit, forget that (who rewards employees doing hard work, integrating well, causing no fuss and showing signs of maturity and leadership nowadays anyway?)
It will be based on how much butt kissing you have done, that's all, you do not need experience.
Hiring:
Quality of hiring is hit or miss.
Amazing employees were hired, I consider them my friends and it is a blast to work with them and learn from them.
Useless employees were hired by useless managers.
The amazing employees stay a little bit over a year then leave as soon as they can.
The useless employees stay and thrive together.
Overall:
I have seen high performing colleagues who became my friends, leave one by one since I started working at Box. They are happy now as they do not have to deal with this nonsense anymore. I also know most of the remaining ones are either thinking about leaving in the coming months or already actively interviewing at other companies.
Myself, I'm still here, taking my time to find a better position elsewhere and not leave for the sake of leaving even if most days, I wake up and just tell myself to quit on the spot, it will be fine.
General consensus is dealing with childish, rude, unprofessional, inexperienced micro managers is not what we want in life so we are finding solutions on our own since upper management does not care. We have all been screwed at one point since we joined.
Thanks for the “start-up” experience Box, we'll try to be valued somewhere else, good luck with your future endeavours.
