A Clean Energy Startup With a Toxic Work Environment - Anonymous employee dcbel Employee Review

It's clear that letting the CMO hire his own agency to perform some of the marketing tasks is a conflict of interest. He abused this arrangement, valuing his own agency and its employees over anyone who worked for him at dcbel. He was focused on sending as much money as possible into his own business rather than the interests of dcbel or its employees. His agency hired students or outsourced tasks to poor countries, charging the company premium prices and taking credit for any wins by the internal team. While the agency made mistakes that were laughably amateur, he would not take responsibility and went on the defensive about the slightest criticism. This created an emperor's new clothes scenario: everyone knew what the problem was but no one could speak out about it. Meetings were frequently cancelled and were otherwise unproductive. No constructive feedback was offered, as almost no feedback was offered to his internal employees. New hires were left to fend for themselves as management barely spoke to them. Projects were cancelled after months of work and no reason was given. A childish superstar culture permeated the department, valuing the loudest voices rather than meaningful contributions.