Pros
We help people who have been left behind by traditional group health insurance. Customers love our product, even though it isn't a fit for everyone. We have 5-star reviews and high customer support ratings. Most employees care deeply about each other and about our customers. Working at such a small company, there's been room to take initiative and influence the company's direction. The company culture was one of the main reasons many of us stayed despite PeopleKeep's struggle to find growth. When Eric Morgan became Interim CEO in October 2018, he brought a calmer temperament than our former CEO (who was known for destructive outbursts). When Eric took over, he didn't disrupt the culture. He let existing managers guide the company toward a period of more open ownership over responsibilities. Most of the positive Glassdoor reviews came during this 9 month period.
Cons
But now our culture is threatened by a new CEO. Most of the people who built our product and company culture have left the company. Victoria Hodgkins was hired as COO a few months ago. Then the board of directors decided to appoint her as CEO even though our most recent employee survey was the most negative it has been in years. In the survey, employees specifically called out Victoria's actions as reasons they weren't happy. She only gave their concerns lip service. In fact, in an all hands meeting she announced that she had been brought in as a change agent and that anyone who didn't like the new direction should consider whether they still belonged at PeopleKeep. Victoria tried to change things without asking about what was working well. This has caused a high amount of friction among the leadership team. A few weeks after the all hands meeting, employee morale took another turn for the worse. Our long-time CTO announced he was quitting. Eric Morgan also announced he would step down from interim CEO on July 1 and that Victoria would be promoted to CEO. He said that PeopleKeep would hire an outsourced engineering company from Albania to audit the Product Development team's people and processes and make recommendations on what to change. He said the Product Development team would have to start following the outsourced company's processes. Within days, the Head of Engineering and Head of Product both resigned. All of this happened just after we started ramping up to build a new product (which had only become possible after new regulations were passed). I'm not sure why we're making so many big changes at the exact moment when we need our company to rally together to make our next product. But I'm concerned that Victoria doesn't value the culture that made PeopleKeep a great place to work. If you like taking orders you might do well here. Most people who challenge anything seem to be pushed out of the company.
