Firstly, Change.org as an activist platform has been stagnating due to changing social media trends, and there is no strategy to get out of the doldrums. There are few new ideas in the company, and almost everything that you think of has already been tried in some fashion in the past; others who have been around longer have said as much. The only exception is perhaps using ChatGPT for more and more stuff. It doesn’t help that many people are very resistant to new directions and are quick to attack what they’re not familiar with. I’m not sure if senior management knows how to improve the financial situation other than layoffs, or how to improve morale other than off-sites. There have been 3 rounds of layoffs within an ~18 months span, and there have been more in the past. The company has zero loyalty to you and will not hesitate to get rid of you. If your immigration status is tied to employment, then tough luck, they will make sure to screw you over extra hard. The layoffs are not determined by your competency, knowledge, importance, or tenure. I’ve seen highly senior people who held core institutional knowledge or were cornerstones of the culture let go because someone simply didn’t like them. Worse yet, they have twice had team off-sites and team-bonding events while at the same time laying off people. The offsite events are no small cost, having to fly people across the world. Talk about insensitivity and blatant lies about having to cut costs. A good chunk of the engineering team is dedicated to upgrading rails, databases, and doing other productivity improvements, and not building new features. There have hardly been any new hires recently, and the company is operating on somewhat of a skeleton crew. The entire company is remote with teams across the world. As a new hire, it is very hard, if not impossible, to build any meaningful connections and rapport outside your immediate team. You will likely feel incredibly siloed and lonely, depending on your team and work. Engineering teams were historically structured for maximum autonomy, which has its pros, and not for effectiveness. There are a myriad of frameworks, databases, and services in use, perhaps a few too many IMHO. Things move slower than what you'd expect here and take longer and more people than at other companies of comparable size. The code base is somewhat lower quality than average, and other engineers have corroborated as much. There were some efforts to improve the engineering process, but they were mostly blunted. In one instance, a small issue that should have required maybe a few days for approval took months instead, leaving everyone flustered. Hiring is slow, having to go through committees for review, which you might not expect at a similar-size company. The interview process took 7-8 rounds plus another take-home assignment, but that might have been streamlined recently, I'm not sure. There have been leadership changes recently, bringing back the old leadership, but I don’t see any difference compared with the old. The new (old) CEO, Ben, was complicit in some of the things that the outgoing CEO, Nick, was unpopular for. As the board chair, he was actively “helping” Nick all throughout Nick’s tenure, and he took home a good salary. However, he was treated like a savior upon return. One of his first actions upon return was to bring back his cronies. These people were put into top leadership positions without having any prior management experience. One of them, the COO, has serrrrioous integrity issues. For a start, he is a pathological liar, and nothing that he says can be trusted. He makes himself the head of IT and abuses his power to spy on people’s machines and conversations, much more than what should be standard. Others on Glassdoor have also written about him, and I won’t regurgitate them here. The CEO looked at him and was like, yep, he’s exactly who I need. When they previously “left” the company, they never truly left, they were merely waiting on the bench while getting paid. That sounds like textbook cronyism to me, and I heavily question Ben’s own integrity and competence. But hey, at least people, especially the old-timers, like the previous folks more and are happier. As for the CTO, he is merely a yes-man and a figurehead. He has no design or vision for the engineering team, and he does not care about you as an engineer and will not advocate for you. Communication from him is minimal. To be fair, he is just interim and it’s not really his job to care much. I also doubt that he would have been able to do much even if he tried. The company culture and power structure largely neuters his (or any other CTO for that matter) powers. The diversity of the company, and certainly its leadership team, is pretty average at best for a bay area company, just look at the about team page. Career development is very limited. The company is small and so there is just less room for growth and promotions; there can only be so many senior staff engineers. At other small companies, people might grow by wearing many hats and having freedom to work on many things. At Change, teams are rigidly structured and no such opportunities exist. Security is tight, and a lot of things such as AWS access are locked down. I understand that having good security is important and that it’s preferable to having bad security. However, prepare for having dozens of passwords, connecting to multiple VPNs, being auto-logged out every few hours, and being stonewalled by the security team with getting certain things done. The pay is mediocre, it's nothing to write home about, and there's only the salary, no equity, and no bonuses except maybe some retention bonuses due to layoffs. You will have to place a hefty premium on the company's mission. The company's business model is essentially that of an ad platform where the "ads" are the petitions and people pay for impressions. To be fair, the company is completely upfront about the fact that the money goes to Change, not the petition starter. There's nothing wrong with ads per se, and it’s just something to keep in mind. Is Change.org effective as an activist platform? A little bit. Petitions do achieve victory, and good progress is being made. However, I’m still not sure how much of it is causation vs coincidence. Oh and finally, the union takes 1% of your salary.
Perhaps none of this is too damning, and I’m sure many people have seen worse elsewhere. Change.org is an activist company that pretends to be a tech company when it’s convenient. Change.org is mediocre at every level, and it is completely soulless. I would look elsewhere first.
