Asyncing ship - Senior Product Manager Loom Employee Review

The product has great potential (more on that later) but your experience at Loom will definitely depend on if you are a manager or IC. If you are a manager at Loom, you’ll get lots of power, pay, and room to grow even if it’s your first time managing a team. The learning curve can be steep, but Loom will be patient with your progress. As an IC, you can expect to wait a long time to level up if at all. You are expected to be the best of the best to get the recognition you deserve so don’t count on a promotion or raise even after putting in the work. I have never experienced the divide between leadership and ICs as much as I have at Loom. Engagement surveys show how bad things have gotten and eNPS scores are tanking across core teams (we are talking single digits out of 100 for product, engineering, and design which are core teams). Back to the product. While the core product is fantastic, Loom just rolled out Loom HQ, which most of the company was against. It's caused a lot of behind-the-scenes friction and confusion over the direction this company is headed in. As the company scales rapidly, the cofounders seem to be losing their way. The CEO is learning to be an executive in real time but its clear he is better suited and more interested in being a product leader. The CTO is overly involved in non-technical projects and his priorities are very confusing. He clearly wants control of Loom’s culture without the operations background to properly execute his ideas. Both cofounders are close friends with early employees and aren’t shy about hanging out with them which gives off a sense of favoritism and unfair treatment to the rest of the company. Not a good look for a company this size and stage. The pressure of building a company with a product that has a lot of traction after the pandemic isn’t for everyone and the positive reviews the cofounders have left of themselves on Glassdoor show that they aren’t great at handling criticism which is a major red flag as leaders. Remember at the end of the day these are the guys that are your manager’s managers. They are the ones reporting to the board. Also, managers and leaders are asked to leave favorable Glassdoor reviews which skews stats because they are the ones with most leeway in the company anyway as I explained above. But even then multiple execs (VP level) have left due to burnout in the last year (Marketing, Design, People), and new execs are creating very stressful environments for their teams as they try to reach unrealistic goals. This isn’t meant to be a criticism of either of the cofounders, these are just observations, actions, and consequences that people should know about. I’m sure they’re decent people but what matters is who they are in a work context. Since everything trickles from the top their lack of focus causes thrash that even the most junior members of the company can feel. Loom isn’t a huge company so it is important for anyone considering working here to know these things. There is a difference between creating a product and creating a company, and Loom seems to think its product is enough to create a company. It’s not. Its buying too much into its own sales pitch…sure the product helps with remote and hybrid work and is a great product but it isn’t the only solution. We still have issues with communicating, managing time, and getting our own team members to feel comfortable with recording Looms. No meeting Wednesdays are good but it can still be a struggle at times. The culture is changing a lot which you can expect at a growing company. Attrition is growing and I wouldn’t be surprised if attrition is on an upswing in a few months as employees reach their first or second anniversaries and get their equity mostly vested. I’ll probably be one of them. People aren’t mass quitting yet but whenever I hear about who is leaving it is always someone who had a big presence at the company and/or a POC. From my perspective Loom operates as: profit/product and then people. Loom is trying hard to be the social network for work but the lack of support for ICs, poor communication practices and culture shows that a social network isn’t enough. If you are an IC who is ok with just showing up getting your paycheck and moving on with your life you can tolerate this place. But if you want to grow and thrive and have a career defining experience look somewhere else. There are other companies where the drama doesn't take away from what could otherwise be a good career experience.