Avoid this place - Anonymous employee CouchSurfing Employee Review

We have chosen to prioritize the community and employees over everything else. Publicizing or prioritizing who currently holds the CEO title is not important to Couchsurfing. The Couchsurfing community and Couchsurfing team as a whole are the important top priorities to Couchsurfing. The CEO role can involve a lot of outward-facing work. Most effective leaders prioritize observing and listening over direct participation. Also, you likely would not want any CEO deeply involved in every decision. The CEO is responsible for realizing Couchsurfing’s potential, keeping the Couchsurfing community safe, ensuring that employees can count on being paid so they can put food on the tables for their families and meet personal financial obligations, sourcing the resources the company needs to be successful, providing performance and results for investors, and more. Perhaps some interactions are less than ideal given the weight of and stress from these responsibilities. The CEO comes from a place of gratitude to have the opportunity to work for the Couchsurfing community alongside the Couchsurfing team. The feedback we received from the anonymous feedback tool was primarily superficial and not particularly useful. When thoughtfully challenged on anonymous feedback, even while keeping their anonymity, people simply didn’t want to engage in constructive dialogues. We took it offline, have bi-monthly company-wide meetings to provide updates, scheduled weekly 1:1s and everyone is available and responsive via other internal communication tools. Though we may not always agree with or take action on the feedback, there has never been an instance of an employee experiencing reprisal as a result of sharing their thoughts, concerns or ideas. With regard to transparency, we are sorry this was your impression. Clearly we still have some work to do here. We take the allegation of workplace harassment very seriously. We have reviewed the CEO’s written communications and have found no evidence of workplace harassment. We have never received any complaints, reports or even inklings of workplace harassment at Couchsurfing and encourage anyone that legitimately experiences harassment to follow the proper resolution channels. We appreciate your recognition of the COO’s attention to detail. There are many moving parts to a business, many of which employees may never be aware of, and he successfully and exceptionally manages them. Our goal is to support good workplace hygiene that includes office rules around office clutter, dirty dishes, and general professional workplace organization. We do hold several yearly off-sites since we are a globally distributed team. These meetings are 100% optional though we do encourage those who can to join. This past fall we found that meeting in San Francisco where we had held several past off-sites was less fresh and more expensive than alternatives. We provided a list of options to the team who then chose Barcelona. We also asked what week worked best for them without planning 3+ months in the future. As this event was held during the off-peak travel season, Barcelona was a more economical choice and far more affordable than San Francisco. We wholeheartedly disagree regarding the qualifications and capabilities of the COO and CPO and will let their professional resume speak for themselves. The expectation that employees adhere to company processes should not come as a surprise to any legitimate professional. Also, while we solicit feedback from everyone in the company that does not mean that every decision will be made based solely on that feedback. Employees are never fired because they are “not liked”. There are several reasons reasons we may let talent go but likability is not one of them. We have over 40 full-time and part-time employees, contractors and consultants and only 5 people in managerial roles, not including the CEO. That ratio is in line with industry standards. We respect the privacy of our colleagues and by no means deviate from any standard practices of nearly every professional organization when it comes to personnel transitions. Announcing to the company when someone is terminated will never be a company policy. If there are specific situations that require additional context, we provide that. The person that quit on the spot had been at the company for less than a year and was demanding a pay increase of 50%. We use reliable market information to appropriately and competitively compensate individuals for their roles in the company and adjust that compensation based on combination of performance and results. As such, we do not make freewheeling changes to compensation and this type of raise was well above our norm. We genuinely wish them well in their pursuit of opportunities that can meet their compensation needs. We would like to wholeheartedly thank you for leaving this feedback and wish you well on your future endeavors.