Great people and product you can own - Vice President of Engineering Hallow Employee Review

Team is incredible to work with

Remote work can be hard sometimes

Most fun job I ever had. The team is truly incredible. You know how at most jobs you’ve got a few friends, people you like, neutral people, and people you wouldn’t miss if you left? This job is different. I loved everybody, we were all genuinely friends in real life. Smart, caring, deeply focused on finding meaning and purpose in everything. We still hang out! Mission is awesome. Never woke up wondering if I was doing the right thing. Every day I helped people get closer to God. Got to help build an amazing culture. Benefits are incredible. Stipends for health & wellness, spiritual wellness, career development, 12 weeks paid maternity and paternity, 401k matching, equity, fun company trips, free food in the office weekly, socials monthly. Startup culture. Work where you want, when you want, as long as you want. If your job gets done, they don’t care how you do it. Super accommodating. I have a serious autoimmune disability and had to work from home for 6 months because I was at risk of dying, and they never gave me a hard time when I had to rest or was too sick to work. Everyone helped to take care of me. I never felt as loved in a workplace as I did here.

The disrespect I experienced when I got laid off is something I’ll never forget or tolerate again. I worked hard to improve the executive’s lives and make my job obsolete. I worked across 9 different departments so I could gain experience and get promoted to a new team. Was promised a career here with growth opportunities, was discussing that promotion and where I would be a good fit. Sunday I got a Christmas present from my boss, Tuesday apparently something had changed because I got fired with flawless performance reviews. I was completely blindsided. I asked why this had been so rushed and what happened to moving me somewhere I was more needed. To their credit, the execs reconsidered and let me apply internally to be a Content Editor (I’d been editing major series with the content team for about a year, and all the writers loved my work). After submitting everything, radio silence. I was on payroll for 3 weeks with little instruction on what to do during the day. Anytime I’d try to call HR, she’d move the meeting or try to cancel it. Finally I snapped and told them to get on a call *now*, I don’t care if I have a job or not at this point, just need this to be over. I was told my work wasn’t good enough to be on the content team, so after 3 weeks of pushing my last day back, I was gonna be done that Friday. I got to announce my own departure via Slack, and the executive team and HR pressured me to whitewash the truth. Say your role is going away, that it’s being wound down, and you’re leaving, etc etc. I was really hurt by that. These people who I respected, admired, and worked hard for, didn’t want to face accountability for their decision. In my exit interview, I told them that was a coward’s move. I told the team the truth—the company administration fired me by eliminating my role, and I hadn’t gotten placed on another team. The TLDR here is it’s just a job. It’s really easy when you work for a mission driven company to feel like you’re going the extra mile for God. The truth is, if they don’t want you there, you won’t be. What happened to me could happen to anyone. It’s not a family, it’s just another job. It’s the best job I’ve ever had and I loved it! But all the same, jobs start and they end. You should have your eyes open, and you shouldn’t tolerate the problems you see because you think in the grand scheme of things it’s for a higher purpose. For example, my boss was an absentee manager. He didn’t give me anything to do, so I had to go find work on other teams. I thought we had an understanding that he knew I was working hard and adding value, so I didn’t call him on the fact that I was in a shell/float role and he wasn’t supporting my career advancement by not being there. I learned when I got fired that because I was working behind the scenes and he wasn’t actively managing me, probably nobody saw my value on a daily basis, so I was expendable. Since then, I learned to always shout my wins. I demand concrete goals to accomplish to get a promotion, and I never shut up when I reach them. That scenario is something I tolerated because I loved the job and didn’t wanna ruffle any feathers. Never again. I don’t want to scare anyone off from working here, like I said, best job I ever had. My boss did make amends, for the record: he met with me regularly for about a year to give me advice and networking help until I had a new full-time role I liked. He talked me up to over 50 colleagues and VC firms. Hallow paid for a few thousand dollars of career coaching. I’m still friends with everyone and see the team often. It just breaks my heart that that’s how it ended. Things have changed since I left—after the blowback, nothing like my situation has happened since. I’m glad they learned from the mistake, but it’s a shame it was at my expense. I understand the business decision, but the execs let me down by how they treated me.