Pros
- They'll give you a pay cheque every two weeks. - The people are great because they're all unified by one thing: the realization that they work for a terrible company and they're powerless to change anything. - The People and Culture team tries, at least. They're just as powerless to affect change as many of the staff, but at least they're trying.
Cons
Ah, where to start? - The CEO is hands-on. He's beyond micro-manager. He'll just jump in and change things - from PPC campaigns to a website build - without notifying the people responsible for those areas. The fun part is obviously when the people overseeing those areas have to explain decisions they didn't make. - The direction of the company changes regularly. Not just campaigns or projects, I mean the scope of their business changes. So one day you could be working on launching a new brand, but the next day you'll be pulled off that project because now you'll be helping build a SAAS platform for a spin-off company. Then that will get scrapped in favor of a new app they're testing for the week. It often feels like they're making up their business plan as they go along. - Few people ever challenge the CEO, even when they know his decisions are going to have negative consequences. This is a major problem! A manager will pass on the direction to their staff, who in turn question the logic, only to be met with "yeah I know it doesn't make sense, but Arash wants it so..." - Everything is chaotic and disorganized, and it's all done this way under the guise of being "fast-paced". That's nonsense. Even when everyone knows exactly what's coming, months in advance, and there should be a plan in place, it is ignored. Then, everyone ends up scrambling trying to do everything last minute. - Apathy has become a big part of the culture. The majority of staff have learned to keep their head down and not question anything, for fear of losing their job. To me, that's the saddest part. - "Opportunity to grow" is dangled in front of employees to get them to volunteer for more work. You rarely ever get rewarded, though. It's all a way of making one person take on multiple responsibilities, outside the role they were hired for. But hey, it's a great way for the company to save a buck! - There's constant turnover. I had four different bosses in under a year. This might be expected in some roles, but I'm talking about high-level, leadership positions. How can you possibly have any success with that kind of instability? - There's nothing "blue chip" about Cymax. The benefits plan did get upgraded, but it went from bad to mediocre. That's not something you brag about. - Overall, it's a toxic, exploitative, demoralizing environment that drains even the most optimistic person of their energy. I've seen so many good people go from enthusiastic and motivated, to negative and withdrawn in a period of months. Cymax is a tech pretender chasing the next golden opportunity to make a buck, at the expense of ethics and employee morale.