Crooked management, no structure, bad office working conditions, bad attitudes and unprofessional behavior, no team coaching, no internal reviews or real employee growth programs, a lot of emergencies that aren't actually emergencies
I started at Checkster in the prime of HR tech a few years ago and was excited to become part of such a seemingly flexible but moving company. However, things quickly revealed themselves and they were not as they had seemed when I was hired. Legal? Yes. Enjoyable? No.
TLDR; I could not ever recommend someone to this company. The C-levels/management are crooked, inefficient, and have no idea what they're doing.
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Having worked extremely close with the entirely company from day one there was not a thing I did not see. I witnessed multiple accounts of public verbal harassment towards employees including myself, extremely inappropriate race-driven jokes on company-wide meetings, multiple employees leaving work crying and having breakdowns on a regular basis because of problems that all stemmed from management which was evident to the everyone. However, lacking the culture to foster organic growth and trust it has become extremely difficult for employees to break through and let their concerns be heard.
As I left they kept repeating multiple times how they will never hire remote workers. I was not remote but they were making it very clear that any other person coming in could not be remote. So if you are expecting that, take caution.
The working conditions in the office that they are now moving people into are horrendous. They position it as a "quaint garage on the hillsides of Novato" which it is. You are in a garage that in the summer mornings it starts at 70F and by the end of the day its 90F because they refuse to spend the time and money for adequate cooling/heating. In the winter you're bracing in for 35F days with only a fire that you have to tend all day while putting out the fires from management. For the last 8 months of my tenure at Checkster there was no water or sink on premise. You could not get water or rinse out your dishes which they have to keep in a bucket where the wildlife finds its way. It became a massive burden to be there each day.
There is no HR, there is no way to mediate, there is no one who can stand between two people and ensure balance. If you remotely need HR for things such as: medical/insurance questions because of conditions or FMLA, retirement planning, and ensuring that you have a safe space to exist at the company, Checkster might not be for you.
The C-level management does not do a very good job at communicating clearly, accurately, and without lying. I unraveled multiple large lies told to me about my own work and cover up excuses while at Checkster and there's just a point where you have to ask yourself "why would they lie about all these things?"
They have no plan and can't focus on doing any one thing. Instead of listening to their teams they impose their whimsical ideas (out of process disrupting the entire team) and then come back and are upset when nothing is how they wanted it, the way that they clearly did not communicate it. You are tasked with a project, told you need to own it, and then when it comes time to deliver (if you could through all the micro managing) they probably won't get that product into peoples hands because there was no driving business factor in the first place. So. Much. Time. Wasted.
If you really took the time to get to the end of this essay I hope you now have a vivid illustration of the unique challenges that you'd be facing at Checkster. Do you get "amazing opportunities to work with big businesses around the world"? Sure, kind of, however you also sacrifice everything you thought you knew about how business works. Even if you have successfully run a business, managed teams, brought profit to the table, Checkster will make you feel like you've done nothing. Every single day.
