Look. Up until three weeks before they fired me, I’d have been one of these raving fans leaving nothing but positivity in my review. They certainly talk a good talk. The pay is good and the perks they offer are sometimes hard to even believe. But underneath it all is a toxic culture holding up immature leaders who have no business managing human beings.
Everything was great. I had nothing but good feedback, I was meeting my goals, I had good relationships with everybody. Then one day I was handed a project with absolutely impossible timing requirements. I don’t just mean it would have been really hard to make these deadlines…I mean impossible. There were dependencies within the project that required other people, outside of the company, to turn things around in record time, and they had no reason to prioritize my emergency. I had no control over that, but I spent the next weeks making an honest, good faith effort to accomplish the impossible anyway. I was working long hours, making a nuisance of myself trying to push things through at a ridiculous pace. I was also talking to my manager, laying out all the reasons this was unrealistic, offering other, more reasonable solutions to the problem, offering alternate timelines…he spent those same weeks harassing me about not "meeting the goal," ignoring everything I said, and writing me up for “missing deadlines.”
My manager caused me all kinds of confusion and grief, because in calls, face to face, he really never had a bad word for me. He listened to my reasonable and rational arguments about this project's timeline, and seemed to understand and even agree. He’d mutter something about talking to his bosses about it. Then the next day I’d get an email or a Slack message from him—something in writing—that completely ignored the conversations we’d had and said things like “I know you did some research that told you X, but we’re not like other companies, so I still believe Y is possible and you’re still expected to do Y.”
None of these people above me had ever done my job, they had no marketing experience, and I was in fact the senior-most marketer at the company, constantly told I was a leader and my experience was valued. So you’d think I’d have some say in our marketing tactics, but no. In fact I had already planned out the quarter and set goals, taking ownership the way they pretend they want you to, and nobody wanted to even hear about those. I honestly thought I was going crazy, I was getting so many mixed signals and conflicting information, but at the root I always knew I was being threatened. I spent so much time crying to my friends about this situation, feeling helpless and unheard. And I honestly thought I was going insane, because this was the best culture I’d ever worked for, right?? How could this be happening? Surely this would pass and everybody would come to their senses.
After three weeks of that abuse and gaslighting, I was getting ready to leave for a scheduled vacation. When I offered to take my laptop with me on vacation and keep chasing people down who owed me things so I could keep the process moving, I was told “no, take your time, enjoy your vacation!” But the night before I was to leave, I got invited to a Zoom with my manager and HR where I was fired abruptly and without discussion. No severance, nothing, just “ship back your laptop and your access to our systems is now revoked.” My manager read a script about how I was being terminated for failure to meet the expectations of my role and wouldn’t meet my eyes. When I asked if I could say something, HR said “this is not a conversation.”
I see now they had systematically built a paper trail designed to make me look incompetent and incapable, all while I was too stressed out and desperate to follow along and protect myself. I was stunned and hurt, but willing to walk away peacefully, to be the bigger person and just never think about them again.
Then, months later, it came to my attention that the day after I was fired, my manager sent a Slack message in the #general channel, to all 70 members of the company, calling me out by name and stating that I was “unable to meet the expectations of [my] role or to execute at the level required” and so I was no longer employed with Prefect. When I saw a screenshot of that message I was shocked. I thought it looked like it was meant to scare other team members, to make an example of me and shake everybody up a little. Several people reached out to me on LinkedIn to express shock, confusion, and concern. Certainly nobody I’ve talked to from within the company has said “oh yeah, we all saw that coming.” Several people told me they'd raised concerns with HR or the CEO about the totally unprofessional and inappropriate message on Slack. One of those people was also fired soon after, under similar baffling circumstances.
As for that message…70 employees have no right to my HR information or details about why I was terminated; this announcement was made after I was gone and had no way to defend myself or tell my side of the story. 70 individuals, most of whom I respected and had enjoyed working with, now believed I was incompetent at the career I’ve spent nearly two decades building. Prefect defamed my character and damaged my reputation. Who knows how many of those people talked to others in the industry. We all know how rumors fly, and it’s a small world. I’ve been barely able to secure an interview for almost 4 months now. I left a good job of 3 years AND turned down other offers for Prefect, because I was so sure it was a good opportunity for growth. I was wrong.
That Slack message is the reason I decided to write this review. It's bad enough to set me up and fire me the way they did, but to then attack my reputation? No. What they said was simply not true. I was meeting all the goals that were reasonable; the only "goal" I didn't meet was writing and publishing one customer case study per week (starting immediately with no ramp-up time). First off, that's not a goal, it's a tactic. Secondly, the actual goal was to get leads, and I offered many alternatives that would serve that purpose and be, you know...possible. They weren't interested in allowing me to meet the goal, they just wanted to give me an impossible task and fire me for failing.
Run, don’t walk, from this company if you value your sanity, your reputation, and your livelihood.
