Next Jump Reviews

When you join Next Jump, the first thing you’ll notice is a barrage of NxJ jargons. There are so many of those (mostly pointless) that they hand you sheets full of them as part of the onboarding package. NoLHF (Lying, Hiding, Faking) being one of them. Which is probably the most hypocritical thing you’ll notice right away. It only gets worse. Where does one even start? How about no HR? Which basically gives the co-CEOs free reign to do and say as they please with no repercussions. Especially Mr. Kim (CK) who is known to make crude, sleazy remarks towards the female employees to get some cheap laughs. He humiliates employees in front of the whole company nevertheless, on regular basis in the name of giving “honest truth” but God-Forbid if someone dares provide similar (anonymous) feedback to them - then it becomes an “attack” and you will get emails to Back Off and threats to be furloughed, exposed or axed. co-CEOs: This brings me to the whole co-CEOs debacle. No one knows or understands why this decision was made a few years back. CK is extremely arrogant and a bona fide narcissist. The other CEO is a rambling, incoherent damsel in distress who craves constant sympathy and support while providing none herself. Was she added to show diversity, as she adds or brings nothing to the table? Or maybe just to validate CK’s unethical behaviors, as her only function seems to be to agree and nod to everything CK says… without any shame. They also have a messiah complex, so much so they are calling the new office “Chapel” and they claimed in a company-wide meeting that when people listen to their talks, it’s like they have found Jesus... Exactly. They also surround themselves with Yes-men (MV21) only whose jobs are to bow before them without question and implement their corrupt orders and policies. PLB: When you join, you are immediately put into this grueling, pseudo-psychological program called PLB, where you have to share your deepest and darkest secrets. If they aren’t tragic enough, you might be spending months and months in this program doing customer service tickets before you get to do the actual job you were hired for. I was told to fake stories and tears just so I could “graduate” and get out of it. That doesn’t stop there. Throughout your time at NxJ, you’ll be asked to present in front of the whole company how you are developing yourself by again sharing intimate details about your personal life. Everyone will judge and rate you on your presentation, even employees who have no idea who you are. The dramatic the story, the more brownie points you’ll earn, and management will praise you for being “brave” but later hold everything you shared against you. A group of “expert” panel will also judge you on the spot and give you tips on how to be a better employee, person, parent, child despite having none of those qualities themselves. Management: Upper management is probably the worst humans you will ever meet. One of them is in a habit of calling meetings with 5 - 10 mins notice and if you don’t reply promptly, you lack ownership and care. They pretend to care for your physical and mental health but it’s all a façade. Their life goal seems to be to make you miserable just because they themselves are. Micromanagement is common despite giving the illusion of “ownership” and decisions are made on a whim rather than data available. There is no reasoning with them or you will immediately be labeled and replaced. Employee Treatment: The employees are treated as literal slaves with no regard for their personal lives. Work/life balance doesn’t exist. You are expected to work 12+ hours a day on regular basis. Insurance is awful and no one wants to fix it just coz the ‘wealthy’ mgt doesn’t care. Taking PTOs is frowned upon and oftentimes is flat out rejected even if you have genuine reasons. If your morale is down, it’s always your fault. You'll be gaslight to a point that you will start questioning your own existence. Premium vs Basic: This new open discrimination was the last straw for many. Basically, moving forward you will be labeled Partner if you are willing to come to the office and meet certain criteria - which basically means selling your soul to them. You obey without any ifs, and, or buts and in return you'll get all the supposed perks. Or you are Basic if you prefer to WFH, meaning you are pretty much disposable and can be disposed off any time and without any reason. This goes against everything this company claims to stand for. Out of everyone who “applied” to be a Partner, only ONE was picked and 4 follow-ups. They completely disregard years and years of hard work one has put in and picked based on who’s working on their next pet project at the moment. CK has claimed over and over he can run the company with just 4 people and this is exactly where they are heading. The turnover rate has been crazy, almost 50% of the workforce has quit within an year or so but the mgt simply refuses to acknowledge that it’s an issue. Whoever is left, has to do 4/5 person’s jobs by themselves and still gets no recognition or empathy from the top. They are high on “outsourcing” everything but how the company operates and how unreasonable the deadlines are - they can never retain an external relationship. Everything is crumbling down but the sheer arrogance of co-CEOs is blinding them to acknowledge it.

I want to preface this review by emphasizing that Next Jump does not have an HR department. Thus there is no system to keep upper management in check. With that in mind, let’s begin the horror story that is Next Jump. When you start your role at Next Jump, you are put into a grueling pseudo-psychology bootcamp known as PLB. A panel of judges will judge you based on how “deep” you have reflected on your personal life on 3 week intervals. For many, PLB re-opened a lot of wounds from the past; because everything in Next Jump adheres to the pseudo-psychology created by the CEOs, there is no real support system for those who need it. In addition, what is revealed in PLB can be used against you. The CEOs have even used the stories that past employees have shared in confidentiality to promote their own image. Moreover, during PLB, even if you’re hired as an engineer/business associate, you will be working in customer support until you “graduate” (this takes months for many employees). Please don’t be bought into their “deliberately developmental” advertising, it’s all a scam for overworking and then gaslighting their employees. The culture is a facade and is toxic in practice. When you “graduate” PLB, you join a team without any real proper training/onboarding. The developer experience is terrible. It can all be attributed to upper management’s unreal expectations and no real product management. Ideas are generated on the whim of CEOs and VPs without any proper backing by data/metrics. I have seen pages being thrown away despite yielding better results just because it was missing the “wow” factor. In addition, Next Jump will claim it’s “agile” and “iterative” by pushing for quick versions of products and pages. This translates to “we have an idea, let’s meet at 5pm, I expect to see something in the morning, and let’s never maintain this”. The turnaround time on projects is completely unreasonable. There have been many times I stayed up past midnight just to get releases out. Because of the pressure and constant “crunch” time, the code is in an abysmal state with poor quality, no documentation, and hanging by a thread. There is no QA process, no engineering culture, and overall a terrible work environment to be in. Oftentimes, you will hear the phrase “you will wear many hats at Next Jump”. This translates to “you will do all the work, from mocks, graphic design, copy writing, coding, data analysis, and more”. The design process is horrendous. Senior management will blatantly rip off design, images, and content from other websites and slap it on pages as their own. They will come up with poorly drawn sketches and vague ideas with no roadmap and expect designers to create something within a few hours. Mocks and wireframes are met with a dense request of “can you put real data on that?” UI/UX designers are given no freedom, and end up mundanely slapping images together for a poster/banner. At Next Jump, your life will be ripped away from you. It isn’t just a few seasons of overtime, but a norm of staying past midnight, working on weekends, and always being on call. Last year, they gave the whole company a week off during the summer, only to later be told that it was counted towards each employee’s PTO at the end of the year. Your Saturdays will be taken away from you for company “parties” and events (which by the way you have to plan and execute, they don’t believe in using event planners). You will be a part of the “Next Jump family” and you will be expected to be there for everything. Work will be your one and only life. They will also claim to have "culture initiatives" to "help you grow". In reality, they are too stingy to hire more employees and essentially you will be working multiple jobs. From recruiting, to IT, and event planning, you will be staying later, doing more, and being criticized on for more than what is on your job description. Ultimately, my biggest reason for leaving Next Jump is the unfair treatment of employees on a routinely basis. International employees are trapped on empty promises of a green card and will be de-prioritized if they “don't work hard enough”. Contractors will never receive a full time offer and are treated as “second-class citizens”. Even full time employees are grouped into buckets and management will ostracize those who they deem as "poor performers" from "premium employees". For those in their “good books”, be prepared to be overworked, stretched thin, and still be ridiculed to do more. Next Jump will also drop the axe on you out of the blue, despite their "no fire policy". An employee was furloughed because she spoke up against the CEOs’ views on important social issues. Others were also furloughed and fired when they weren’t dedicating their whole lives to Next Jump. For a company that promotes transparency and feedback, upper management are complete hypocrites who do not hear the voice of their employees.