High urgency, low clarity — constant change without direction - Senior Software Engineer Kajabi Employee Review

Fast paced, AI forward, strong leadership

Sometimes chaotic, not for the feint of heart

The people, and to be specific, everyone below the senior leadership tier. These are some of the most hardworking, collaborative, and talented people I've ever had the privilege of working alongside. Shared trauma will do that. It creates an unusual kind of camaraderie, genuine, hard-earned, and frankly the only reason to stay as long as most of us did.

Kajabi was fine until it wasn't. That's the thing no one tells you: it's not the slow decay that gets you, it's the speed. One restructuring, then another, then a third. A leadership overhaul that arrived with roughly zero warning. Every time you thought you'd found the floor, there wasn't one. By the time I left, the entire company was operating under a regime of fear, teams pitted against each other for no coherent reason, not even for survival (those decisions had already been made, as I confirmed in my exit interview), but just because. The dysfunction had become self-perpetuating. There is a perennial problem at most companies where teams work in silos, with little visibility into what anyone else is doing. It was particularly egregious here. On top of unclear expectations (the prevailing directive was: now, we need it now, change it now), unclear feedback, and a near-total absence of support around production, timelines, and cross-functional communication, leadership had zero understanding of what their own teams actually did. Not in the abstract, strategic sense. On the most basic level. This wasn't a transparency issue; it was an ignorance issue. Leadership seems to believe that their teams work some kind of overnight magic, like elves, and that the work simply materializes by morning. That's not how it works. And it explains the staggering lack of respect for the effort and expertise their employees bring every single day. I noticed that leadership commented on an earlier review that politics isn't what gets people ahead. That is both true and untrue. There is absolutely an inner circle, and the energy they project is alienating and hostile to everyone outside it. But here's the thing: even being inside that circle doesn't protect you. By the end, no one was safe. The fear was total, the hierarchy was theatrical, and the company had effectively cannibalized whatever goodwill it had left. Let's talk about AI, since apparently we have to. No one here had any clear idea of what they wanted AI to accomplish, which platforms to use, or what problems they were actually trying to solve. Teams were asked to brainstorm AI applications within their respective domains. What kind of applications? Using what tools? Toward what goal? No answer. Just: explore AI. We want you to explore AI. The audacity of the vagueness was, truly, something to behold. The pay isn't great either. This is, without question, the worst company I have ever worked for, and I've spent the majority of my career in start-ups, which should tell you something. It is remarkable how comprehensively a small number of individuals can poison an entire organization. I don't know who's still there. I hope those people find something better. PS. I haven't even gotten into the actual political culture cultivated by those up top. Let's just say their actions are fully in line with their views. You can feel it everywhere.