A few months into 2020, some additions to the team on the marketing and operations side (newly the CEO) were early signals of the companies slide into troubles. There was clear nepotism in one hire and the way the new hire conducted himself while he was still interviewing by using business data that only his recently hired sister could have provided him to assist in his presentation to the interview panel. It was disappointing that the board decided to bring on this new, costly leadership hire to then carry out layoffs of 1/3 of the work force, which simply could've been avoided by other already present leaders sorting out the finances instead of requiring an outsider to lay down such a heavy sentence. This absolutely killed morale, with current employees scrambling to interview and leave the sinking ship. It was also remarkable transparent that a separate new hire on the marketing leadership, now promoted to COO, was so inadequate in her management of a rebrand project, that it seemed easiest for her to shirk responsibility of its hasty rollout and blame/layoff the entire design department instead, as well as a director of product. While cheaper to turn to a design agency (with little experience in digital product design) for future work, it lacks vision and experience with design that you'd expect in senior management, and it always was questionable to hear her claim years of experience that a simple check of her LinkedIn invalidated.
