Pros
Interesting product and a great team for the most part
Cons
When I started at ControlUp, I was excited to work on a great project with a fantastic team; as time went on, however, this dream became a nightmare. I soon realized that my 1:1s with my boss consisted solely of him discussing his drug use and talking poorly of a teammate. I would listen to ongoing complaints that my teammate did no work, was unfocused, and “acted like a salesperson to please the higher-ups” while actually not accomplishing any assigned tasks. I felt this was all highly inappropriate. We had a handful of week-long mandatory offsites per year. After returning to my hotel room on the final evening of my first offsite after a goodbye party, I received a text from my boss at 1:55AM. Clearly intoxicated, he texted me, “just friends want to chat?” amongst other things. I was confused but not suspicious, and so I agreed. During this encounter, my boss talked poorly of another teammate, saying that he is an unhappy person with a miserable life who finds joy in bringing others down. My boss offered to share his drugs with me, told me that I am “beautiful,” and broke down into tears, confessing to me that his partner is uncomfortable with my presence on the team. He put his arm around me and embraced me four times throughout the conversation. I was beyond uncomfortable and thus politely withdrew myself from the situation. At 3:51am, I received more texts, one including a heart as he wished me goodnight. I did not respond. During the next offsite event, my boss texted me several times, inviting me to join a game and admitting to being intoxicated. Remembering prior events, I declined. During our team dinner, I casually brought up my interest in a fun side gig once a week. This ended up being brought up in 3 separate 1:1s in which my boss complained that all spare time needs to be dedicated to the company. After this offsite is when things truly took a downturn. Another higher-up suddenly started singling me out for working in dim lighting. He called me out publicly in team meetings on the matter, waving a ring light in the air, threatening that if I did not brighten my office, I would be forced to purchase said light to shine at my face during meetings, though I was already clearly visible (other teammates had either low lighting or cameras off completely, none of whom were ever reprimanded). My boss told me that because of my office lighting, this higher-up implied to him that he was unable to run a team. My boss suggested that I put on a fake background to solve the issue. Ironically, the background made me less visible, but he said this higher-up was happy with it, so I left it on moving forward. I confided in my boss that I felt uneasy being singled out in front of my entire team even though other teammates had similar lighting conditions. He responded saying that at my salary level, I should capitulate. Suddenly, my boss started complaining about my work in public Slack channels. He had given me a task to automate, and because I was told I was driving this project, I was working on it without submitting it half-baked. He then accused me of doing no work, so I changed my approach on this task, releasing various finished components in nearly a dozen pull requests. As with all prior PRs, he approved with no comments nor complaints. From there, he seemed happy, but then he found one bug and then completely took half of my tasks away from me. In our final 1:1, he told me that I was doing a “perfect amount of work.” He also said that he felt I was perhaps upset by recent events, and suggested that he bring human resources in to help with our communication. He also offered to talk off-hours so that I could “cuss him out” (his words). Finding this yet again inappropriate, I declined. In my final team meeting, my boss congratulated me for increasing our code suite by over 20% in just the last few weeks. Four days later, I was terminated. During the termination meeting, I brought up my confusion, as he had said I was doing a “perfect amount of work” just days prior. My boss denied saying this even with human resources on the call, and instead claimed that I was being let go because "some tests are failing". I truly regret my time at ControlUp and would caution anyone looking to apply there.
