Great team, lacking strong leadership, wishy-wishy policies, declining work culture - Anonymous employee Roomi Employee Review

2.0
May 28, 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Co-workers are the best part of working at Roomi. Everyone is willing to help out and pitch in because they are the only ones who truly understand what you're going through in your day-to-day tasks and dealing with management. Laid back environment to work in.

Cons

Lack of structure was understandable when the company was smaller, but it continues to be an issue even as the company has grown to employ 20+ people. Every team member outside of engineering heads their own department in strategy and execution, but only men have received pointless title promotions. CEO thinks that because there are lots of women in the company, the company is diverse, but no woman is apart of the management team. Comparisons are often made to how quickly some male team member is learning new skills and how you should be doing the same. Credit is given to the person who gets to present the numbers at the end of the month but not the people who contributed to the execution of the project. Management talks a lot about people not meeting goals, but they don't set hard goals for anyone to meet other than to see "growth" every month. Even when you show growth, it may or may not be enough depending on the mood of management and the pressure they're feeling from investors. Compliments are readily given, but then you're told you're not doing enough or working fast enough, all the while given more and more tasks to complete. There is a huge imbalance of work loads on people who have diverse skills sets and are willing to do a lot and work long hours for the team. People's roles are very gray, so expect to be given tasks that don't make sense and that are distracting from your main responsibility, but then have your performance evaluated only based your main responsibility. Since the company has grown, idea stealing has become common. Everything is a win for the team, which is great, until management doesn't recognize who are the people working night and day and who is slacking off and riding the wave because they "collaborated" on a project. Some remote team members have a tendency to boss you around, not take you seriously, and be difficult to work with because they are "head" of their department. Work culture has really declined. You might be either really happy or really unhappy depending on which bucket you're in.

Explore other reviews about Roomi

5.0
Oct 8, 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Roomi is a Series A company and having worked for a number of startups at multiple stages, I can say this: I know mistakes were made and people were unhappy. Roomi is a young company with young leaders; mistakes are inevitable. However, it seems Roomi is learning and growing from the lessons taught by those same mistakes. There are not many Series A companies out there that have Finance, HR, and Operations leadership - people with actual experience, not bloated tech titles that everyone else has. It shows me that they want to scale but do so in the right way, with the right people, and the right processes in place. I think it's amazing that they have proper performance management software, solid PTO, WFH Wednesdays, fully paid for benefits, a 401(k) account (no matching contributions though), etc. I've worked for companies who have been around for 10+ years that didn't offer some of these benefits. I know there's still a lot of progress to be made but I think Roomi is putting the right people in place to do that.

Cons

Everything takes time. With startups, a lot of things get stuck in "analysis paralysis" and things take longer than it should. I think Roomi's improving on this though. Internal communications need to be improved; they have 6 global offices and various remote employees and that can cause a bottleneck in communication. There needs to be more communication from leadership to the team.

6
5.0
Feb 25, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

* Operates in an exciting space, helping people find roommates. * Rapidly seeing your work impact people's lives for the better. * Visibility into company metrics, progress, and accessibility to the data you need on all levels to do your job while knowing how the company is performing. * Laid back culture, including excellent interaction with peers and management. * We're not charged with unneeded process, tasks, or procedures that most companies have in place. * A mandate to do your job and get access to the tools required. * Roles are flexible; if you're so inclined, you can grow yourself, skills, and career by becoming "the person" on a subject area. * Lots of runway in the sector for growth.

Cons

* Needs a 401k match. * It's a startup which can be great for some people like me. Determine if a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment is for you.

3
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