Great people terrible culture and leaders - Anonymous employee Alianza Employee Review

I am sorry to hear that you did not have a more positive experience at Alianza. I appreciate the feedback and hope that I can learn from it and be better in the future. I’d like to respond to a few of your comments: I acknowledge that our senior team often provides direct feedback and critiques performance. I understand that this can be uncomfortable for some people. However, at Alianza, open and honest feedback is a part of our culture. One of our core values states: “We care enough to be candid and objective in our interactions with each other.” If we can’t be critical of each other and ourselves, I believe we are robbing ourselves and Alianza of opportunities to learn, grow and improve. Our desire for open feedback is not just top down. I welcome feedback and criticism on the executive team's performance and on my performance and decisions. I know I have lots of areas where I can improve; and I want to learn and grow from the advice of others…especially those that have achieved high levels of performance; including Google, Apple or any other company, employee or outsider that has something to offer that is going to help Alianza or me to be better. No sacred cows at Alianza; just a hefty appetite to learn, grow and continually improve. I’m also sorry about your PTO experience. A few years ago we started experimenting with a less formal PTO policy. We hoped that if PTO was managed directly between each employee and their direct manager, it would focus the company on contribution and merit, rather than the simple accrual method. We heard of other companies having success with this approach and wanted to give it a try at Alianza. At first, feedback from the team was positive, but after a few years we started seeing challenges and pockets of abuse from both managers and employees. At the beginning of 2018, we listened to employee feedback and implemented a hybrid PTO policy with better guardrails and more clearly defined expectations, but still not the simple accrual method we used before. At the same time, we also implemented a new sabbatical policy for employees that have built up tenure and domain experience with Alianza. So far, the response has been positive, but I’m always open for critical feedback on changes or tweaks we could make to help us be even better. Another of our values states that, “We align all we do with the customer experience in mind.” It is because of our deep care for our customers and their experience working with Alianza, that we hold ourselves to such a high bar for individual, team and company performance. I appreciate all of our employees that care deeply about our customers, do their best, contribute in meaningful ways, give and take candid feedback, and make Alianza better every day.