Guild Reviews

As a passionate and long standing member of this community, I am writing a 2 star review because it is now clear to me that the current leadership team does not have what it takes to execute on Guild's mission to the fullest capacity. Moreover, it is also becoming apparent to me that there is some degree of entitlement/righteousness/bias amongst the inner leadership circle that prevents them from taking reviews like this seriously. In fact, my primary inspiration for writing this review was seeing two negative reviews get taken down just this morning. That said, a quick list of the major problems I see: - The inner or "OG" circle of leaders: There is a group of leaders who have been here since the beginning who continue to have all of the real power at Guild. If one of them doesn't like you (which I have seen happen for the silliest of reasons) say goodbye to your ability to get anything done. Weren't here 2 years ago? You'll never have a real seat at the table. - A couple of widely disliked leaders. Similar to the first point, there are a handful of leaders and people in positions of power who are widely disliked both personally and professionally. Doesn't matter though because Rachel (the CEO) likes them so they aren't going anywhere. - Too many thinkers, not enough doers. We don't need people with fancy degrees who can make slide decks. We need people with practical experience quickly scaling companies. Too much time is wasted on consensus and giving everyone a voice. - Hiring experienced people and ignoring them. Why even hire experienced people if they have no real decision making power and cannot effectively disagree with the current Guild consensus.

Frankly, something is VERY WRONG with the company culture. I think there are some big problems that Guild has to solve, including a cultural transformation. I'd summarize the issues into a few categories: 1) The "In Crowd" - There are a handful of old timers that have been around that are driving ALL of the decisions at Guild. If they don't agree, they will talk to each other and find ways to shut your ideas out. I don't even think they recognize that they are doing it, but you hear a lot of new people talk about how they feel shut out by the OG club. 2) Decision Making - if you want to feel empowered to make decisions for your team... this isn't the company for you. Decisions are made by SVPs+ and that's it. If Guild wants to grow, it has to empower every level of the organization. I worry that we have single points of failure with certain leaders all around Guild because they won't empower their people and must be part of every decision. 3) Opinions - Guild has created a culture where everyone and anyone is encouraged to give feedback to each other. At first, this sounds great, but what has ended up happening at Guild is that everyone feels they can say anything they want to people without a filter. Even the performance cycle facilitates a process where everyone can tell you anonymously what they feel about you without facts which is then repeated to you by your manager, which becomes very awkward and unproductive. It KILLS team morale vs uplifting people. 4) Expert Ideas - They want to hire experts, but they don't want their opinions. Great talent will continue to leave Guild - you have to ask yourself why so many leaders have left (or been pushed out) 5) Recognition - I've never experienced a culture where my ideas have been used without my consent and presented on without any acknowledgement.