Structural problems and uncompetitive pay - Marketing Houzz Employee Review

Houzz has poor project planning and doesn't listen to the expertise of even their director level hires. Things moved too fast where new ideas would come up and people would work crazy hours to get things in motion instead of scheduling new initiatives for a few weeks out. The upper management often ignores data and they'll make decisions that are contrary to what customers and potential customers have said that they want. Houzz was unwilling to invest in external pro marketing for years and it impacted them in terms of SEO and a slowdown in warm leads - initiatives that my former manager proposed in 2017 didn't get up and running until 2021. Houzz tries to operate on too lean of a team, meaning that often you are the only person that can do your job which makes it nearly impossible to take like a week off any time that isn't around the winter holidays, so it can be hard to travel. Layoffs every year. I got really good at saving my money because you can never feel safe about your job. There was definitely a divide too between the older managers who earned enough to own homes and renovate and younger renters who couldn't afford to participate in the renovation industry and I always felt a little embarrassed to just live in an apartment. My last pay raise was may 2019 and in 2020 they only gave us RSUs. But RSUs can't help me pay my bills today. When they were finally hiring another person for my team with the same title, the pay ranged from $2500-$12500 more than what I made and they were willing to hire someone remote who lives in a lower cost of living area than Orange county. Also the UK team members got way more maternity leave than US team members which always felt like a point of jealousy even though I never went on mat leave myself, and they would get temp workers to fill the gap because they are gone for up to a year but that didn't happen in the US They talked about career pathing in 2017 but it must not have applied to marketing because my manager had no idea what it was when I asked about it, and when I left in 2021 the leveling for marketing was still in the works after being revisited in late 2020.