Pros
The colleagues. Full stop. Some of the most hardworking, talented, genuinely invested people I’ve ever worked with. They show up with everything they have — usually with no budget, no recognition, and no air cover from above. If you end up here, the people in the trenches will not let you down. They never did. And for a long time — a good, long time — this was genuinely the best job I’ve ever had. I loved the brand. I loved the culture. I believed in what we were building. That’s not nothing. That’s actually everything, and I want to be honest that it existed, because what came after deserves context.
Cons
Private equity got involved. Leadership rotated. And then rotated again. I had 5 managers in 5 years — not because I was a problem, but because the instability at the top never stopped trickling down. Layoffs became a recurring event, not a crisis. People stopped being shocked and started just waiting for the next one. That’s a cultural death in slow motion. The company is hemorrhaging people and doesn’t seem to notice or care. Talented, experienced employees are walking out the door at a pace that should be alarming, and compensation hasn’t come close to keeping up with what people are actually worth. The attitude seems to be that replaceable is fine. It isn’t. You can’t replace institutional knowledge and genuine commitment with a cheaper hire and a prayer. The product is losing ground fast. AI is reshaping this entire space and Litmos is watching competitors pull ahead while leadership moves at a pace that suggests nobody at the top has a real sense of urgency. They have nobody to blame but themselves. And then there’s the new CMO (second one hired this year.) Another confident-for-no-reason executive who walked in like he built the place. Big personality, bigger ego, questionable grasp of the actual work. His behavior in meetings is inappropriate at best, and has even been reported to HR. Nothing happened. It won’t. The CEO relationship is a full shield and everyone knows it. What I can’t stop thinking about: performance review season was right around the corner when I left. The marketing team, people who worked their hearts out for a full year with no budget and no recognition, are about to be evaluated by a manager who has known them for a matter of weeks. He has no context for what they’ve accomplished, no baseline for what the job actually requires, and no credibility to assess any of it. That’s not a performance review. That’s a setup. Complete insanity.