Toxic culture due to poor leadership - Anonymous employee ActiveState Employee Review

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ActiveState used to be an amazing place to work — truly people-oriented, caring, and built around the idea that employees mattered. Under previous leadership, the company fostered a supportive environment where collaboration, trust, and goodwill weren’t just slogans. It genuinely felt like a community. The new CEO is not necessarily the problem. He is very strategy-oriented and decisive, which can be positive in certain contexts. But the challenges ActiveState faces are deeper and more systemic than any one leader. The company has shifted from a culture of empowerment to one defined by urgency, fear, and constant churn.

It’s heartbreaking because there are still good people inside the organization fighting to preserve the traits that once made ActiveState special — empathy, teamwork, and a sense of shared purpose. Unfortunately, their voices aren’t being heard, or they get fired. Decision-making has become increasingly top-down, and the environment has grown tense and unpredictable. A common misconception internally is that the company “just needs more process.” But when you function as a startup, you can’t manufacture process overnight. What’s happening now is a kind of organizational self-delusion: everyone is scrambling to create procedures, frameworks, and reports to give the illusion of control, instead of addressing the real root causes. The result is a company with great potential, and great people, but with a culture that has drifted far from what once made it a genuinely wonderful place to work.