The Bad Place - Software Engineer Storyblocks Employee Review

There are reviews on here that talk about the culture, the innovation, the commitment to employees, etc. Those reviews are old. Storyblocks was bought several years ago and the leadership who set those standards left (besides the CEO). New leadership whose values didn’t align with Storyblocks came in and changed the company. Growth became the most important thing, especially during the pandemic, where the company would’ve grown with literally zero effort thanks to everyone being stuck at home and not shooting their own footage. The director and leadership levels eventually all left for better positions and were replaced by people who were either technically inept or didn’t care to get their hands dirty. With all of this overhaul in management, Storyblocks really lost it’s way in terms of company culture. Mid-pandemic, the company also decided to do a full renovation of its office while adding an additional floor, again not seeing the writing on the wall re: where their growth was coming from. Nobody wanted to go back to the office, so this beautiful, expensive office sat unused for years, no doubt costing Storyblocks tons of money every month. Finally, in the fall of 2022 they did massive layoffs. These layoffs were targeting specific teams but practically didn’t touch management. This left a huge portion of the company with nobody to manage and nothing interesting to work on. The most knowledgeable and adept people began to leave after layoffs and Storyblocks didn’t backfill them. They recently did another round of layoffs, this time heavily targeting management and the c-suite/VPs. They’re left with an organization that’s frankensteined together from the reorg, seemingly by random. The choice of who to keep in the management layer felt bizarre and like favoritism, and the outlook for engineering is especially bleak.