TIDAL Reviews

TLDR: - Toxic culture of fear and intimidation - Lack of organization and overall direction - Mistreatment of black employees - Lack of communication - Subpar work/life balance - COVID-19 pandemic response - Toxic culture of fear and intimidation: It’s common to see senior leadership and department heads berating employees for small mistakes or perceived insubordination. Attendance is take "secretly" twice a day to report employees' whereabouts directly to senior leadership. Doors to all-hands meetings are locked to punish late arrivals. Employees and managers often refrain from voicing concerns regarding company policies and culture in fear of being publicly chastised, labeled “insubordinate”, or fired. - Lack of organization and overall direction: Leadership actively resists establishing any kind of standards or processes. This organizational and strategic incompetence creates a false sense of urgency for the most menial tasks and forces employees to work tirelessly on last minute/low impact projects that are seemingly random. Many employees fear losing professional skills developed elsewhere in the grind of the daily chaos. - Mistreatment of black employees: I witnessed at least two employees wrongfully terminated, both of whom were black women. One employee was fired to save face for leadership after a public backlash that said employee previously warned leadership against ensued. The other employee was fired immediately after giving two weeks notice although she was previously in good standing. Another black employee was subject to patronizing and disrespectful comments from an Oslo team member on multiple occasions with little intervention from management and none from HR. - Lack of communication: There are no open lines of communication between leadership, HR and employees in part because of the culture of fear. Additionally, communication from leadership and HR is sparse at best and non-existent in most cases. Despite Tidal’s high turnover rate, departures are not officially or broadly communicated leaving most people confused about who is still on staff until they don’t show up for a meeting. Pre-pandemic, year end review and salary increase conversations were inexplicably delayed multiple times with no communication as to when conversations would take place. Conversations were ultimately delayed by 2 months. - Subpar work/life balance: U.S. benefits are not competitive nor the industry standard, and they are paltry compared to the benefits given to European employees. U.S. employees are routinely expected to forego their personal lives on nights and weekends for work in the name of “grit” and “being a part of the Tidal family”, but this flexibility is not reciprocated in terms of flexible work hours or remote work when life events arise. - COVID-19 pandemic response: The company’s pandemic response was guided primarily by a mistrust of employees and our ability to work from home. Employee’s concerns were rarely answered and often met with gaslighting from senior leadership and management. Policies enacted as part of the response were inequitable between the Oslo (mostly white) and New York (mostly BIPOC) offices. Ultimately the battle waged by leadership over COVID policies created an even more chaotic environment that made it all but impossible for most employees to be productive. PANDEMIC RESPONSE IN DEPTH: At the start of the pandemic, employees were required to come into the office until in-person work was shutdown by the government despite employee concerns of sitting in an open office plan with no window ventilation. Senior leadership’s response was “this is like AIDS”… “it’s the new normal”. The company claims to care about black lives and culture, but have little to no regard for the safety and well being of the black lives on their payroll. New York (mostly BIPOC) employees were forced to take pay cuts due to the pandemic while Oslo employees were not. Norwegian employees were also given the option to work in-office while management tried to force U.S. employees to do so for less pay. When this was brought to a senior leader’s attention, they responded “don’t compare yourself to other people”. Senior leadership repeatedly tried to unnecessarily force New York employees back into the office over the summer of 2020 without clear and detailed safety guidelines. The response to employees’ concerns was another round of gaslighting from senior leadership. Mental health concerns were met with the statement that “being in the office will be better for your mental health”. Concerns about commuting were answered with a comment about personal responsibility during the commute and that failure to commute safely reflected a lack of concern for one’s health, family, and job. HR remained silent to questions about the return to the office for weeks, only to tell employees they would need to provide a disability or medical form to prove they could not work in the office days before the scheduled reopening. Senior leadership furloughed over 20 employees without previously notifying their superiors. Several employees had their communications cut off mid-meeting.