11y
I’m sorry your experience with our company was so horrible. Some good news - we now have rip-free office chairs. While no work environment is perfect, I don’t think your perspective of our company is entirely accurate or fair.
But first, I do want to address some criticisms contained within your post that are grounded in some truth.
As a young and growing company, our training process has not always been perfect. However, for some years now, significant training procedures have been implemented for the majority of the entry positions in our company. Moreover, at least once per year, every employee is formally reviewed and provided a pay adjustment. This admittedly did not always occur for all employees during the first few years of our company existence.
Yes, we did in fact open the office for 1 Black Friday in our 8 year history. Sorry. We did this because we thought it was important in supporting our customers (some of whom work 24/7/365) and it was a mistake. On the flip note, we did provide Valentines day off one year (ok, by mistake on my part). We have always otherwise provided standard time off around Thanksgiving and Christmas and further tried to be reasonable and fair with the use of PTO around key holidays given our support commitments to our customers and partners.
Now, some areas in which I take exception with your comments.
At BlueToad, we have always provided excellent benefits, including 10 paid holidays and generous paid time off (all employees start with at least 2 weeks and at five years are entitled to between 17 and 22 days of paid time off). We also pay 100% of our employee healthcare, dental and vision costs. To be fair, there was a time when brand new employees were only entitled to 6 PTO days in their very first year. While I don’t find that entirely unreasonable, our policy has since changed.
Second, our employee recognition activities have always been sincere efforts on our part to build teamwork and provide a fun and happy environment. Moreover, they have been for the most part employee led initiatives - not something simply dictated down from the top.
Finally, our security practices have never been horrifying. I contend that they were reasonable given the types of information we deal with at our company. We were in fact the victim of a cyberattack in 2012. We had a forensic audit performed of our security practices. We have since gone from “reasonable" security practices to “exceptional" security practices. We have 24/7 intrusion detection services, conduct routine penetration testing, and code with best practices in mind. We also handle customer content in a secure and careful manner. Even though we do not deal with National secrets or personal health or financial information, data security is very important to us and is taken very seriously.
One last note, I am a co-owner of the company and have been our CEO since 2012 and was previously President. I have never intimidated or terrorized people in our office. Quite the contrary, I care deeply about our employees. While our former CEO was not perfect, I believe this is also an unfair characterization of him.