Strange despotic small company! - Anonymous employee Sciton Employee Review

Oblivious CEO is a tired old man failing to lead the company. No directions that matter or are meaningful. No ramifications for sales managers if goals are not met, consequently, they are naturally rarely met. Marketing and product marketing loiter around lost with murky directions. Engineers work on projects with no planning that are often shelved midstream or projects that lead to nowhere. So many in the company are entitled with inflated titles. Reminds me of my early days in little league when each of us got the trophy every season even though our team was pretty bad. Very strange! While at Sciton I was asked to participate in a couple of "Culture Club" meetings ran by the CEO. I was rather embarrassed to find that all they did in these meetings was gossip about other employees rather than mitigating the perceived hypocrisy of arbitrary values. I recommend a more appropriate title, "Gossip Club." Again, very strange! Glassdoor ranks this company low for a good reason, and you can’t help but agree. 1. Employees are often terminated by top management with not an iota of evidence of malfeasance, promoting fear and curbing open communication from employees that stay behind. 2. Most employees are issued stock options when they join. Beware, these are practically useless. Private company so you can't do anything with them. Unlikely that the company can go public or anyone will buy it. Only once in 20 years the company has allowed to cash out stock options and that was when the stock valuation was apparently low. It hurts me to know that the owner does not care that there are many employees left behind who have worked so hard for a decade or more with stocks which cannot be cashed and essentially rendering them useless. 3. Company falsely inflates 10% bonus in offer letters but pays virtually nothing. 4. Relatively poor benefits. 5. Generally dingy work environment. Crammed workspaces. Facilities are located in old part of town with insufficient parking. 6. Increasingly poor morale with high employee turnover. 7. Copycat products. Nothing new that I could feel exited about to market. 8. CEO lacks business sense and now is very old and so cannot keep up with competition. 9. Roily directions from top stifles company growth.