Toxic senior management and no longer a great place to work - Avis employé Employé (anonyme) ExperiencePoint

Remote first, forced to go to office monthly for a 1 hour meeting.

The culture is largely surface-level with little depth behind it. Leadership sets themes for the year — like "building trust" — but neither the owners nor the alignment team take meaningful action to back them up. They don't practice what they preach, which is particularly glaring given that they sell training on human-centered change, yet seem unable to apply those principles internally. The workload is extremely uneven. Some employees are tasked with everything while others clearly don't carry a full-time load. This same imbalance plays out in team participation — there's an expectation that everyone hosts team meetings at least once, but certain people consistently get a pass. Meanwhile, if you do volunteer, you suddenly become the default voice for the entire team in all-staff meetings because no one else steps up. There's also a pattern of saying one thing and meaning another. Office attendance is framed as optional ("come in if you're able to") but is implicitly mandatory. HR is especially guilty of poor communication — they rarely engage with staff on a human level, which is ironic given that "human" is literally in their job title. Most of the alignment team lacks proper managerial training, and it shows in how they lead people. DEI exists to check a box rather than being genuinely embedded in policies or processes. Leadership is reactive rather than proactive, which leads to repeated rounds of layoffs instead of thoughtful planning. Some decisions feel emotionally driven — the push to keep the office open, for example, seems rooted in the owner's nostalgia for a busy, buzzing workplace that no longer exists. They use words like support during this transition so the surviving staff think and feel the staff being layed off are being helped when really it just means they are paying a severance.

Some of the best managers I've ever had worked here for a while. They fostered my curiosity and made sure I could pursue difficult questions, and made me feel like I was a valued member of the team. The rest of the staff were generally friendly, professional, and nice to be around. Our product team was enthusiastic, curious, and playful. I had some of my best days with that group of people and levelled up for my next job. There were times it was truly special and exciting to go to work.

CEOs are too involved and micro-mange projects to death. They have clear favorites and leave the non-favorites out to dry. The pay was fine, but with multiple contracts and little notice around renewals (sometimes only a few days before my contract was up) it created unnecessary stress in my personal life. It's the kind of place that's fine for a starter-job but there's a low ceiling for growth, professionally.