Case IQ

2.0

26 Jul 2018

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

When your schedule and boss allows it, afternoons off on Fridays in the summer. Some pretty cool people, although, fewer and fewer. Some team events depending on the team. Nice coffee machine. Big kitchen and pool table. For devs, a great launching place to get experience before you get hired at Shopify. Teams can work well together, depending on the team. The really smart people leave, so a less talented and experienced dev can become a team lead and be considered top dog - where they would be considered just another dev at another company.

Cons

Inexperienced CEO with a bit of an ego who won't consider other people's opinions or ideas. He inherited the business from dad (who was a great human being who cared a lot about his people) but didn't seem to inherit his dad's compassion or business sense. Three partners and it doesn't seem like they talk to each other. Don't get comfortable. You may get fired and you will never see it coming. As a dev, you get paid poorly. They like to hire young and inexperienced so they can pay bare minimum. But as the great devs emerge and you grow and get more experience, the better salary doesn't come with it and as such, you see the most talented people leave for much better incomes. So there is churn. Technology is flawed and will be irrelevant soon. Business model is at risk. Large tech defecit. In dire need of a product manager. Their values are only observable on the walls and tshirts they put them on and they absolutely do not live them out. Radical candor involves being candid with people about performance. People should not be fired if they have never been told they are aren't living up to performance or they have some personality thing you don't like. Being candid means being honest about shortcomings so the person can do something about it. It's a coward's way out to sit across the table from someone who has worked hard for you and always done well on their performance reviews just to slide an envelope across the table with nothing more than a "please review and don't tell people what you get". It's happened to a significant number of my former colleagues and this is their common practice. The affected employees leave having no idea why they were let go and it messes with them. No warnings. No performance issues raised. It's scary because you don't know if you're going to be next because they don't tell you if they aren't happy with you.

Case IQ Response

Thanks for your feedback and I’m sorry that your experience has been so negative. Sorry for the long response, but since you took the time to write such a detailed review, I wanted to do the same. We truly do care about our team and our customers and I’m sorry that you haven’t seen that expressed through our actions. I’ve had the extraordinary experience of building a business with my dad – and two other partners. As the youngest member of the founding team I’ve had the privilege of learning from each of them. Working side by side with my dad, he coached and mentored me for 18 years. Even longer if you count how he helped me run an ice cream bike business from age 16-20 and a painting business in my final summer of university. He’s an incredible man who always showed interest in me and my entrepreneurial spirit. I am forever grateful for the time we got together building this business. We hire lots of great young people. We like the energy and ideas they bring to our company. The highest performers are rewarded with rapid expansion of compensation and responsibility, and I’m sorry that you haven’t seen that. Like any software company, our technology is a work in progress, but our growth from 35 to 135 team members over the past few years shows that our customers get value from the work we do. Our team is stronger than ever and I’m truly excited about our future prospects. With rapid growth, it became harder for me to truly know every member of our team. We had a culture, but weren’t being explicit in trying to design our culture and values. As the partners and I worked to develop our Culture Code last year we thought it was important to explain what we value in an effort to guide our team towards the culture we want. Ultimately the Culture Code is part ‘what we are’ and part aspirational. We have room to be better, but I assure you that we are committed to living our values and I’m sorry you haven’t seen that. Since I became CEO over a year ago now, we’ve had to make many tough decisions about who can be part of our team. We do our very best to treat each person with respect – even when things don’t work out. It’s tough to have candid conversations about performance when things aren’t going well, but this is one of our values because we believe it’s absolutely critical. Great people want feedback and want to improve. We believe they should be given that chance and I’m sorry if you’ve known people who didn’t feel that they were given that opportunity to improve. As a management team we’re working on improving our skills in this area and we all recently read a book called ‘Radical Candor’, and then had offsite training in an effort to improve our skills and knowledge around how to give candid feedback. We are working hard to be better. Thanks again for your feedback and please drop me an email or swing by my office if you’re willing to talk about your thoughts further. Thanks, Joe

Watch your back, but it could work out ok for you. - Software Developer Case IQ Employee Review

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