Formlabs reviews about "upper management"

Upper management is secretive and out of touch a lot of the time

Upper management extends warm signals to you in the first week, shortly thereafter becoming distant father-figures that everyone is supposed to fear.

Pay is comically low vs. rest of industry. Sales comp structure needs some love & to be fleshed out more - it gets “fixed” every year but doesn’t get better. No 401k match despite there being a question asked every town hall and probably the most requested employee change next to pay. No attempt at sustainable / eco friendly product or messaging - what I was told from an Exec was that we are “leaving it up to employees” - this is a cop-out if managers aren’t allowed or are told to have their direct reports carve out time for this. Change comes from the top and it is clear they don’t care. This is a plastics company in the plastics industry with all the waste associated, despite what Execs want you to believe. Zero respect for the tenured people who had/have been there for half of Formlabs' existence or longer. These are people who helped grow the company and shape its culture. An employee was asked to postpone his already-booked sabbatical that kicked in after 6 years. He said no. Management move him to another team as retribution. Middle management has had zero training and is a mess which makes sense considering upper management gives them no support and frequently changes goal posts with no top-down messaging or goals of where the org is going as a whole - except "we want to be the best in 3D printing". Middle management are super micro managing: Camera on requirement during weekly scrums. If you miss an RTO day for being sick you have to “make it up” on a would-be WFH day. If you are at a trade show, that technically makes you out of the office. You are also expected to make up those days you missed by coming into the office on WFH days. RTO requirements: I joined for the flexibility, that has since changed. Some employees were cleared for fully remote work for unfair reasons while others were not. It is clear who management thinks is an important and who is not, and that is not a good feeling. This has become worse with even more micromanagement, now you basically have to clock in in-person. What was once a culture of trust and support has turned into a culture of squeezing everything they can out of fewer employees (since there are semi-annual layoffs). The “Path to Profitability” has caused the company to start looking at people like numbers: what is your daily input, how much you are contributing to the org, and “cutting the dead weight”. People can tell when they’re being looked at like numbers, this decreases morale & job security and increases day-to-day stress. Leadership says "We're still a startup" when justifying layoffs, constant re-orgs, lack of 401k match, small salaries, & asking their employees to do way more than their job titles for the same pay BUT at the same time "We've been around for 12 years and are a well-established company" when trying to justify their space in the market. CEO is a true Zuckerberg in all the wrong ways with zero EQ. Desperately tries to be like Elon, idolizing Tesla, Apple, and similar companies in the pursuit of being like them because that's what he thinks success is. Never stops to ask himself how he can be different.

The pay stinks and upper management always look for ways to chip away at your self-worth. You will work so hard that you will have no energy left on the weekends for anything. There is no financial incentivization (even in sales - it sucks!) and very little moral encouragement. There is a toxic tone, which except for the young resilient energy, is still inexcusable.

Upper management has made it clear they do not care at all about sustainability. We've had an uncommunicated "roadmap" for ~two years and anytime it comes up in a company all hands there's a lot of vague hand waving. Salaries are still significantly low in some parts of the company. The "working day" doesn't exist at Formlabs. Some teams are scheduled for 45 hour weeks (9-6), while some are working from home but "unavailable" for half of the day. If you don't have work/life boundaries that you hold yourself to, Formlabs won't either.

Poor upper management - no direction - leaders put in place are pompous and not helpful - if you aren't fully playing by their rules they degrade you

Almost everyone outside of upper management and software is underpaid. Retention rate is very low as a result, and this isn't really viewed as a problem. The hiring strategy seems to be hire young talent who want to learn and contribute more than they want to build a career at the company.