Pros
There comes a point in your career when you have to decide for what and whom you’re willing to work. Insurance isn’t a ‘sexy’ industry, but it does have room for innovation. CoverHound unfortunately, despite its potential, isn’t the company that’ll do that. And it’s not because of the people. You’ll meet product managers, designers, marketers and engineers who want to disrupt the space and have the smarts and talent to do it. Unfortunately, leadership lacks vision and drains all creativity and brilliance from the workforce. It’s for this reason that the company has been hemorrhaging employees. Before I go into more detail about the leadership, I would like to share some of the perks you can experience at CoverHound: Perks: • Free snacks • Lunch is provided 2X a week: Monday & Friday • Pay is acceptable • Commuter benefits ($75 per month) • PTO is ample • WFH optional once a week
Cons
Issues: • The company has been in “funding mode” for well over a year with no fresh news. Leadership's lack of transparency has had a negative impact on the broader staff’s positivity and productivity. It’s tough to remain passionate about your work when you’re not given the news, support, or tools you need to do it well. o On a side note, it’s also hard to stomach having to share company news on our personal LinkedIn profiles that state the exact opposite of the office’s reality. Forcing us to share your lies under our names is maddening. • Leadership's strategies are from LendingTree circa 1998. He refuses to listen to the professionals he has hired and wastes countless man-hours every month directing strategies that don’t work. o If and when you suggest doing something different to your direct supervisor, they will tell you they agree and that you should mention it in the next meeting. Once you do, they’ll bulldoze you in front of the higher-ups, ensuring that you never get a promotion. • Leadership promotes their favorite yes (wo)men to high-level positions that they are not professionally or emotionally ready to undertake. This causes friction and animosity in and between departments. • Some department heads treat you differently depending on whether or not you follow them on social media. This makes 1:1 meetings very uncomfortable until you ‘like’ and comment on their personal photos. • You are expected to party and drink at all hours of the night at work events. If you don’t (because you want to get a good night’s sleep for the following day’s meetings and maintain a professional relationship with your boss), your department head will likely throw a temper tantrum and resort to all manner of guilt trips. o Side note II: Work events aren’t vacations. This is a job, not a social club. Some of us prefer keeping our personal and our work lives separate. Don’t expect your employees to be your friends. There's a power dynamic between boss and employee that'll make a genuinely equal friendship impossible to have. Managing up is exhausting and causes employees hoping to learn from you to instead lose respect for you. • Because there is no HR to oversee company benefits and ethics, leadership slashes said benefits without notifying staff. This comes as a nasty shock when you need to be reimbursed for travel/educational expenses related to on-the-job responsibilities that have already been pre-approved by management. • Leadership does not understand what it means to strategize. Throwing money at events and hoping to gain a return isn’t working. Listen to your teams. If the majority of your staff is telling you a strategy needs to be reworked (at a high cost to them, especially), then try it. After all, if learning from failure is such a big part of company culture, what could be the harm?