The leadership team have little to no direction and are constantly pivoting the business strategy. This is possibly because the founders have no ability to be impartial about each other’s performance and decision-making. They’re currently undercutting themselves to sell product and its unlikely they’ll be able to bring their costs down to match.
They label the company as an innovator in the materials space but effectively they are a glorified distributor. They source materials from external manufacturers, slap a trendy design on it, and farm it back out to small scale UK manufacturers. The work is only difficult because they run every project with an unrealistic timeline.
Like most startups, burnout is a huge problem. People are seen as a means to an end and are used as such, with no regard to what it does on a personal level. Any attempt to have work life balance, or to improve process to reduce workload is seen as weakness. They’ll try to scare it out of you with bad performance reviews that have no concrete fixable outcomes besides “work more hours”. In the last 10 months the attrition rate has been 75%.
Sexism and misogyny are rife. They burn though female employees at an astonishing rate. The only members considered to be part of the core team are men. Every one of those men were reported for sexual harassment a year ago, by multiple women. Promises were made in private to let go at least one of them. Instead, less than two months later, all three were given stellar reviews and have since been promoted. Two have been allowed to manage teams.