Medium Reviews

Toxic political culture. Very top-down. The team roadmaps are decided by the CEO who should be focusing on how to grow the company instead. The strategy kept changing each month. Just when you thought things were settling on a vision, they'd announce a new initiative and never explained why the previous strategy was discarded. Management is young and doesn't speak up enough to push back. Newer leadership hires brought a culture of toxicity and unprofessionalism to the company. The company doesn't care about its employees. It doesn't care about helping them grow. It only cares about making the executives look good.

A lot of the people who made the company and culture great have left. Management actively fires high performing individuals with the excuse of "poor performance" and denies that it's actually because of retaliation. Medium had internally and externally promoted a culture of being "caring", "mindful", and "inclusive", which attracted a lot of employees who valued these things as well. People were asked for feedback because the company wanted to improve and "continuously improve". Because the employees believed in the organization's stated values and trusted that leadership did as well, people asked questions and started talking about the discrimination and inequities that were happening in our work place. Immediately, management started cleaning house. They fired peopled across the org (Design, Editorial, Engineering, Art, Marketing, etc.). They targeted those who had asked questions during meetings, and those who tried to make it a better work place by organizing a union. The reason that management gave for suddenly firing these individuals was "poor performance", despite the fact that 1. these individuals had been told they were doing well right up day they were fired and 2. all previous feedback (manager/peer reviews) is evidence to the contrary. The career ladder is completely opaque. Requirements and expectations for leveling and growth fluctuate as much as the product direction (a LOT). Reviews and feedback cycles mean nothing. They have gotten many people to join by saying that they do 6 month evals, so that you have an opportunity for promotion soon. Then afterwards, they tell people that (surprise!) there's some arbitrary rule (you've not been there for over a year), and that's the reason they can't be promoted this cycle. Getting good reviews during the performance evaluations does not mean 1. you are on track to getting promoted, or 2. that they will not fire you for "performance" reasons if you ask too many questions. You might have to get therapy to deal with the amount of insane stuff this place puts you through.