Micromanagement and leading by fear - Anonymous employee Smile.io Employee Review

1.0
Feb 5, 2020
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Dog Friendly Office -Downtown Kitchener Location

Cons

-C Levels lead by fear rather than trust -CEO is a boss not a leader -Inexperienced leadership that is being led by inexperienced co-founders -The leaders with experience that don't blindly follow the CEO have either been let go, have left or are fighting an upwards battle because they do not have the freedom or trust needed to do the job they were hired to do -Certain people are put pedestals and their word is seen as gold despite lack of experience/knowledge or proven lack of track record of success -Lack of willingness to listen to and validate employee concerns from a culture or product perspective -Lack of product advancement – product has stayed pretty much stagnant over the past year -Huge turnover of employees in the last 12 months

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Smile.io Response
6y
Thanks for your honest feedback here. You’re totally correct that our founding team and some of our leaders here don’t have experience at other companies. This obviously leads to some gaps in perspective as we grow, and is a problem we need to work on. To help with this, we’ve started investing heavily in training for all levels of leaders: external coaching, training sessions, and growth plans. Obviously this is in progress, but it should help everybody here who leads others at Smile. Trust is extremely important for us to be able to grow, so I’d like to address that. We’ve gone from a company size where everybody is hands-on, to one where people have to trust and lead. We haven’t been perfect during that growth and transition, including myself, but we’re always trying to improve - including AMAs, surveys, and way more regular feedback gathering to make sure we make Smile an amazing place to work. If you have specific feedback on how we can improve there, then please let me know - I’d love to hear it. And in general, I’d really like to hear more about your experience, either in person or even anonymously. Please feel free to email me personally and we can chat. I think it’s natural that companies go through growing pains, but I really want to make sure we can learn from your experiences and feedback. Mike

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Pros

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Cons

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3.0
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Cons

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