Solsten Reviews

- The founders - No onboarding - Micromanagement - No processes - Toxic culture Just plain weird. If you’ve recently joined Solsten, and you feel like it may be too good to be true, I would encourage you to trust your gut. Sure, the money is great. The product is super interesting. State-of-the-art equipment too. The clients all seem really lovely. The people are smart and very knowledgeable in their field. The three weeks off at Xmas (for those who will still be employed by then) sound wonderful. The illusion of flexible working is also there too (or at the start at least). You will also have heard all about how humane and compassionate Solsten is. How some former employees could not cope with a company that is really that nice and were looking for drama where there wasn’t any. Some people, eh! The founders need to scale, but they don’t want to let go. They are absolutely petrified of adding a second level of management. A good half dozen people have been fired without notice nor (plausible) explanation. It doesn’t help when they are no KPIs in place to track progress. There is no onboarding programme. The little information that is available about the products is not being updated. For the avoidance of doubt, two demo videos to clients, recorded more than a year ago, is not a comprehensive training programme. There are very little resources available and you will be on your own. The founders “have no time to document it all”, and new joiners do not have the knowledge to do it themselves. People in management positions, who do have the knowledge, are absolutely slammed with work. And then you will be told that you should know more by now. Further, the “culture” is all smoke and mirrors. You will be asked to “hang your ego at the door” before walking into the office, but this rule certainly does not apply to the founders. A number of us were told we did not understand the founder’s higher level of English, after a colleague pointed out a badly phrased sentence. The founder doubled down and refused to acknowledge that his sentence was poorly worded, instead insisting that some passages will be re-written to suit a more basic reading level. The co-founder keeps boasting about his wonderful client management skills, and how he regularly sends gifts to some of them (if you've ever had a job in corporate you know that's a bit of a no-no). Anyway, all in all, just avoid this company. The founders have a lot of growing up to do themselves before Solsten can scale.

Con: Someone has to take a stance against what is going on at Solsten. There has already been 3 rounds of lay-off's this year so naturally there will be folks posting their reviews. Solsten have: - asked us all to do positive reviews at the beginning of this year - had reviews removed from Glassdoor, it's the major gossip in the office! Glassdoor this is not on!!! The response from Solsten to one of the reviews states: - "Feedback is taken very seriously at Solsten". This is a LIE! - "We encourage anyone interview for any open role to reach out and talk to current team members". Don't do this, go onto Linkedin and speak to EX-Solsten employees if you seek the truth! Current team members are to scared to being fired, in this current job market climate - "Layoffs happened approximately a year ago". LIE! 3 layoff rounds this year already, layoffs are common at Solsten and when you do get laid off be prepared to have the founders blame you for multiple things you did not do. It is only a matter of time before someone submits a lawsuit for perjury against them - "The founders at Solsten are both open to feedback and take it seriously". I mean if ever there was a LIE it is this one. The founders are the biggest ego driven narcissists you will ever meet, but are also extremely insecure at the same time. This leads to mass control as they try to ensure others are only aligned to their view. If you step out of line or voice an opinion be prepared to be cut from the cult! - "Solsten tracks employee satisfaction and currently has an eNPS of 77" - LIE Some other things they lie about - Amount of customers they have - Amount of revenue they are doing A large % of customers do not renew, which says it all. The founder can only sell the product by giving it away at huge discount, which only tells a customer that you have no belief in your product at its actual RRP price-point. This puts us on the back-foot from day one. It is not a good strategy. There are a lack of processes, no on-boarding, no training and no KPI's. You are micromanaged and sadly the senior leadership below the founders do not have the strength to stand-up to the founders, you can see the stress in every single one of them and sadly they relay that onto their teams. Solsten has a history of paying off staff because they are extremely scared that the truth about them will become public. The fact the founders lay into people in public slack channels means that everyone can see what they are really like! To sum up the founders act like they are inspirational leaders, but are actually just dictators. with a new round of senior leaders starting at the beginning of 2023 many were hoping for positive change. Sadly it quickly reverted to the status-quo with the founders unable to let go. The truth is they are running their own company into the ground, they actually managed to hire many good people but # won't let those people do what they are paid to do! We've all heard the rumours of a sale, the only hope current employees have of a normal work-place is for a sale to happen and the founders to be removed from the company. Going through an acquisition can be scary and many potentially end up at the unemployment line but it would at least give the company a chance of being normal.