I write this with the hopes that future potential employees will read the reviews on Glassdoor and take them seriously. The negative ones written on here are sadly accurate and positive ones are usually where the CEO has messaged employees asking to post positive ones to try and counteract. I just hope that people looking for their next opportunity and are excited at the prospect of joining this company think twice or at least question what is being done to rectify the issues before joining.
CEO thinks it is acceptable to consistently comment on character and personality when criticising or commending you rather than skills and output within the workplace. One memorable experience was a ‘strategy’ day in which the sales team were seated around a table and the CEO went around commenting on the flaws of employees that were potentially hindering their sales abilities and asked the team to also share their personal opinions on each individual one by one. Just the thing to get your team feeling supported and motivated!
If your role carries a target just know it will be very difficult to achieve 100% or above. They will dangle all the carrots in front of you that will make it feel as though they’re being generous but you will rarely take home commission.
Leadership team know exactly how to manipulate their teams. Meaning, they will make it seem as though you have the space to contribute ideas and feedback but will never implement and will instead create resentment towards you if they take what you are saying as negative. Best advice here is to just befriend leadership team and never challenge anything. Thanks to the favouritism that drives the company culture this should mean you’re okay. If you can stand to go thru life without morals and integrity that is.
Do not expect any real support for if you are experiencing burnout, down on your numbers or finding something challenging. It may be met with understanding initially but this vulnerability will be used against you later down the line when they want to create an unpleasant narrative about you.
Be prepared to be put on the spot like a little puppet, CEO/leadership team take joy in singling people out and enforcing role play of unrealistic scenarios. I think they insist on doing this to tick the boxes of being a startup/unicorn/silicone valley company with no real considerations of how it tangibly improves the day to day performance of their teams.
Expect messages and calls to your personal number outside of working hours with no heads up. Boundaries don’t exist at GH despite feedback to ‘HR’ team.
CEO wants to be ‘friends’ with everyone. This is only so she has more leverage on you to manipulate you later down the line. CEO has no prior experience in running companies so really has no idea what is appropriate behaviour and where the boundaries are.
For a company that is 6 years old and has around 90-100 employees you’d expect a pretty substantial HR function. Sadly there is currently 0 HR as alluded to earlier. If you genuinely wanted to discuss something confidential or ask for help from HR there is no one employed to deal with this specifically. They did hire someone to do this but from what I was told they were fired shortly after sharing honest opinions about concerns around the culture at GH 😔
Lastly and most importantly, there is one employee in particular who I strongly advise to watch out for. This person has inconceivably been put in charge of onboarding all new joiners (even those in a team they do not manage). This is worrying for multiple reasons. Has little experience managing people. As someone who is responsible for the success of others is innately jealous and doesn’t like to see other’s successes, will make it seem like they do but it’s all in favour of how they appear to CEO. Is a bully (picks on new joiners for being slow to pick things up, sends passive aggressive messages, brings a different personality to work each day making it impossible to feel at ease around them etc). This has been fed-back to CEO multiple times with nothing having been done about it, which tells you everything you need to know. The fact that someone like this is trusted in a position of responsibility and leadership of what could be such a great company is genuinely really sad. So many incredible people could be doing the job that they’re doing but instead greed and manipulation have led to their success at GH. Whilst they are at this company, it will struggle to be a success because ultimately a great company needs great people, and this individual is sadly driving the best ones out.
