Ineffective leadership with no direction has ruined a good product. Instead of using pandemic success to strengthen the core products they acquired multiple companies with no communication or plan on how to integrate. Of course every startup has growing pains but leadership has been using this as an excuse since 2018 (at least). Instead of learning from mistakes and listening to employees voice the same concerns for 5 years GG execs just stroke Advait’s ego and let him run the company into the ground. Companywide there seems to be a trend of ineffective directors and senior management hired because of their experience at Google or Amazon. As a former Google employee I can guarantee you these directors have no real experience managing people and are used to having the structure of a large corporation. But GoGuardian isn’t a large corporation, this leaves most teams with no plan or direction. The company is only still running because they continue to make great hires. Talented people with motivation and fresh perspectives are brought in and after a year (probably less now) lose the spark. We all joined GoGuardian because we liked the vision and the promise, but, after execs made many promises there wouldn’t be layoffs and plenty of bragging about not having laid anybody off in 2020, multiple rounds of layoffs and a complete culture shift have left us in the most toxic work environment I’ve ever experienced. Over the last 5 years I’ve watched too many innovative and driven people lose their passion. After the first mass layoff company culture completely shifted, as is expected. Instead of correcting course and acknowledging the low morale, Advait had his chief HR exec pretty much tell us in an all hands “it is what it is, if you don’t like it you can leave.” Clearly GoGuardian leadership doesn’t have the humility to acknowledge bad leadership patterns and make impactful changes. The company is doing worse than they are willing to admit. Seriously, RUN.
