Key Ingredient has a new CEO - Anonymous employee Key Ingredient Employee Review

During the 3+ years I worked at Key Ingredient I saw the business go through a lot of changes. What was once an environment with horrible morale that was managed by executives that were willfully oblivious to how terrible things were is now a super friendly, hard-working, transparent environment. Dog-friendly, casual dress code, flexible schedule, (very) small team size, semi-frequent team lunches, and a CEO that takes an interest in you and your career made for an awesome place to work. I was very sad to leave such an amazing team.

The future of the business itself can be unclear with occassional worries of being closed by investors. Whenever these concerns arose there was transparency and communication about the state of things. We were never in the dark about what was going on. Because of the small company size there isn't opportunity to move upward, but the CEO is very invested in helping you grow your career and making the most out of your time at the company.

- Really intelligent and eager coworkers - Benefits are better than most small companies - they pay 100% for your insurance and 50% for dependents - You can really own your role, learn and improve on the company's dime - You can dedicate 10% of your time to a side project of your own creation - There's no requirement to work insane hours - In general it feels very much like a startup with a collaborative environment - If you're new in your career, they'll probably hire you as the CEO likes to hire cheap over competent. Just expect to be doing what it takes to learn how to do your job, because there will be no one skilled to teach you. Be prepared to stand your ground when management is wrong about how things need to get done. - Really smart and supportive CTO.

Despite how it is advertised, Key Ingredient is not a startup. They are owned by a 4 billion dollar French company and have been around 8 or 9 years with very, very little actual revenue and never a profit. There is no equity participation for employees. - CEO thinks he knows more than he does and tries to control every decision to the point of trumping well-researched options in favor of his own "idea." - Marketing research is not done before creating a new product - Minimum viable product has been corrupted to mean "we'll never do it completely and we'll product crap." - There's no true direction and the next path is chosen every two weeks by a team that doesn't do any research to determine what NEEDs to be the next thing done - Turnover is high for valid reasons