Pros
Not much to say on the pro side. You can probably get a free clock, though they often don't go off. Location is nice.
Cons
My review of working at this company is going to mostly revolve around its CEO. I don’t mean for this to sound like a personal attack, but Loftie is a very small start-up. While I worked there, there were generally around 6 or 7 other full-time employees. In a situation like that, so many aspects of the job’s demands and the company culture are closely tied the personality of the CEO and the decisions the CEO makes. So all that said, the founder/CEO’s short sighted and impulsive decisions, deep resistance to organization, delusional wishful thinking about business prospects, capriciousness, impatience, egotism, and general incompetence will trickle down to fall on your shoulders and make your time working there miserable. You, whoever you are, can do better than working at Loftie. For me and almost all of the other 5 or so Loftie employees I’ve talked to, working there was an unmanageable burden on my mental health. 1. Pay Pay is atrocious. Raises were more or less unheard of for the time I was there (and from talking with other employees). Expect to make about $10k to $30k less than you’d make for a similar position elsewhere. Expect to hear lots of talk about how much the CEO wants to pay more, but just can’t. 2. Organization Loftie is an extremely chaotic operation. You’ll be asked to work on a project and then, without any warning, be told that a completely different task is now the number one focus, whether or not the first task was finished. When an idea pops into the CEO’s head, you’ll be expected to drop everything and do it. It is difficult to have a sense of your job expectations, your to-do list, and your projects because ultimately your job description will become “doing whatever the CEO happens to be stressed about on this particular day.” You’re caught in an endless cycle of disorganized little tasks that don’t improve the business so much as calm the CEO’s personal anxiety moment to moment. 3. Time Management Management and organization are atrocious and as a result, Loftie employees are constantly told to work evenings and weekends. This is less due to the urgent nature of specific projects, which might normally be justifiable, but more because there is little to no effort from the CEO to sort tasks based on what would have the highest impact while being the lowest burden on employees’ limited time. “What is the priority?” “Everything.” “When should we plan to have this done?” “Yesterday.” Slack messages come at all times of day, all days of the week, including weekends. The sense of urgency never felt like it was tied to a clear benefit for the company, but rather to the CEO's personal need for micromanaging and constant control. 4. Working Weekends Employees are asked to work weekends all the time for little reason. An example: a former employee told me about how they were once asked to spend several weekends in Washington Square Park handing out puzzles for free to tourists in hopes of increasing sales of other items. While it had no apparent positive affect on sales, but it did mean employees losing their precious weekend time. Expect a lot of this kind of thing: poorly thought-out plans with little respect for your life outside of the business. We had to frequently work overtime to realize ideas the CEO had on a whim, with seemingly no further thoughts on the execution or impact. Your personal time will not be respected in any way. 5. Product and Customer Service Plan to do a lot of Customer Service, even if it is not in your job description. The product is deeply flawed and the CEO prefers to spend money on PR to get himself featured in an interview or marketing to make the product appear in glossy ads on Instagram rather than investing in people with the tech know-how to fix the many, many problems these complicated clocks and lamps have. While I won’t get into the details here, I encourage you to research some of the very in-depth Reddit threads written by upset, but eloquent Loftie users. When you work for a company that sells an extremely mediocre (but expensive!) product, expect a LOT of angry customers. 6. PTO and Vacation This is a very big one- we were told we had unlimited vacation days, but we basically had to play chicken to actually use them. That also included sick days. While there was no overt punishment for taking time off or calling out sick, the CEO would be clearly annoyed, often not wishing a “get well,” but instead just continuing to send you Slack messages with various tasks to do. If you do ultimately take a job here, be warned: taking any time off is treated like a personal insult by the CEO. 7. Insurance Insurance plans are likely the worst option available. Huge deductible and a very high copay percentage. The plans are pretty comparable to Obamacare plans available on the marketplace for about the same price. As mentioned, many of the employees are right out of college, so are likely still on their parents’ plans. 8. Mental Health I’ve commiserated with almost all of the other former full-time employees (about 5 total). They all described a similar experience to the one I had. To the last, they all described a massive improvement in their mental health after leaving Loftie. TL;DR: Don't work here. You'll be overworked and underpaid and everyone is miserable. Just because someone is rich enough to start a company, doesn’t mean they have what it takes to run one.