I’m not here with a bone to pick. I’m not here to take shots. I truly want to give prospective employees a clear picture of what life at the Knowledge Coop is like - because choosing a workplace is a huge decision. I know current employees will likely see this and quickly identify me. Hey, y’all. I know that the CEO will read this and convince himself that its author is the problem. But “Lessons from Last Time” is a pretty brutal title for a podcast hosted by someone who can’t seem to learn one every time a valuable employee leaves in exhaustion. So here goes. At the time of my recent and voluntary departure, I was tied for longest-standing employee at the Knowledge Coop (6 years). I watched the company grow from 9 people to 40. I went from low-level hire to the leader of 13 reports. And during that time, I watched over 30 people leave or get fired. I left for reasons similar to many of them. Here are three of the big ones: 1) The CEO treats his company like a vessel for his own whims and not like a business. Over my 6-year tenure, the company rabbit-trailed toward a new product offering nearly every year. From Pre-Licensing Education to a full-service production agency, to a virtual conference system, to a social media platform, to a news outlet, to an LMS SaaS product, the company never leaned into a central product offering or identity. When the CEO sees another business do something successfully in the mortgage space, jealousy drives him to adopt that pursuit as the Knowledge Coop’s own. Then, instead of scoping and staffing for those pursuits, the existing team is tongue-lashed for not simply doing ‘more’ in the name of the company’s overly broad mission to be everything to everyone. This has made the brand a master of none, a frustrating feeling for a workforce with immense talent and drive. And with no consistency in the company’s focus, no job description feels safe or defined. What’s worse is that the subsequent burnout and confusion are often painted as a ‘lack of buy-in.’ 2) The CEO is very duplicitous about the trust he has in his staff. He’ll tout the ‘laid-back’ culture and work-life balance of the workplace, then secretly collect back-door data about computer usage of targeted employees, ambush their managers with misplaced accusations of time theft, and make leaders defend their reports against vague and unverifiable claims. He’ll allow favored employees to be full-time remote and even hire old friends into out-of-state leadership positions….but simultaneously act out against local employees who work approved hybrid schedules. Once the CEO has acquired a distaste for an employee - he begins building narratives about them to justify their eventual expulsion from the company. Instead of setting clear job expectations and judging staff by the results of their work, he gets hyper-focused on small infractions or moments that offend him and then sets those individuals up for failure. This creates an environment where employees, managers specifically, are pressured to sugarcoat and tip-toe around the CEO’s ego to protect themselves and their reports from the Coop churn. 3) Pushback is punished, and yes-people are rewarded. As a lot of the other reviews on here mention, the CEO keeps an inner circle of employees who tell him his s**t don’t stink. These are the people who influence the biggest decisions, not the VPs and Directors who represent the majority of employees. The Knowledge Coop has managed to hire incredibly talented and smart people - but those people are not trusted to steer the ship, interpret data, or tell the CEO “no.” Instead, yes-people are rewarded with the CEO’s ear, and those people are often the most selfish. After around a year, many employees begin to recognize these patterns and become discouraged, disillusioned, and lose their sense of ownership. It became my full-time job for a while to prevent these feelings in my own reports and create a buffer between them and the chaos up top. But I eventually gave up and decided to leave for the sake of my mental health. The great tragedy of this company is how much potential it has to be great, both from a revenue standpoint and as a workplace. But until there are checks and balances that hold the CEO accountable for better business decisions and a non-toxic culture, I can’t recommend working here. I say that as an employee who was given wonderful opportunities and made incredible friends at the Knowledge Coop. I wish them all the best.
