Pros
- It’s a very very small company now, so you’ll quickly get to know everyone’s name! - There are a few good employees left, although you may not get to work with them in-person
Cons
- Your mental health will inevitably suffer at HelloSelf. The company thrives on a culture where employees are expected to sacrifice their personal lives to fuel the self-serving ambitions of a CEO who I believe is both callous and heartless. During my first interaction with him, he openly bragged that he doesn’t believe in work-life balance—a statement that perfectly encapsulates the disregard for employee well-being that permeates the organisation. - No one believes in the CEO anymore. It’s just endless garbage that comes out of his mouth - from proclaiming the company is “basically profitable” and promising that there will be no rounds of redundancy, to running multiple rounds of redundancy in less than 6 months, through to creating his own little nonsense podcast so he can pretend he’s a celebrity and relevant in the industry, or that creating a social network will “save the company”. It’s all genuinely nonsensical drivel and unfortunately even the “C” level executives don’t believe it anymore and are too cowardly to actually say anything. Which brings me to my next point. - A quarter of the company consists of “leadership” with no real expertise or qualifications. They’ve landed their titles because the CEO either “likes their vibe” or gave in to their whining about not feeling included. This means you’ll constantly wrestle with their incompetence, all while they angle for inflated titles like “CTO” or “Chief of Staff” so they can jump ship and claim glory at their next gig. (“Chief of Staff” for a failing 40-person startup? The delusion is staggering. - The company lacks a coherent strategy, frequently shifting direction based on the CEO’s whims, leading to instability and confusion. - The feeling isn’t even one of urgency anymore. Everyone knows the company is circling the drain—except, perhaps, the CEO and his self-important deputy. Most employees are either actively job hunting or waiting for a convenient excuse to start. - Skilled employees find their abilities squandered on poorly conceived, uninformed directives from leadership, stunting career growth. - If you try and make a change you’ll inevitably be frozen out or be informed through back-channels that questioning and challenging half-conceived ideas is not appreciated. That’s not your job at HelloSelf, your job is to fluff the leaders ego’s so they feel better about their failing company. - The quarterly re-orgs are a joke. They have no idea how they should be operating so instead of admitting it they instead move people around, give old things new names without ever really changing the initiatives and force endless conversations and cycles around planning zero direction from the “leaders” because they’re all too busy working from their homes rather than being present and active in the company. I mean 2 of the “C-level” work part time and they spend all of Thursday in their “leadership” meeting. They literally work about 3 days a week and then wonder why the can’t scale their “start up”. - The entire back-end system is a complete mess—a patchwork of rushed, stress-fueled hacks cobbled together years ago by overworked employees. New team members are thrown into this chaos, expected to make sense of it while being pressured to deliver more, faster, and with fewer resources—all to an impossible standard that the company doesn’t actually hold itself to. And just when you think you’re making progress, one of the so-called “leadership team” will swoop in and derail everything with their baseless opinions. No data, no evidence, no facts—just their random shower thoughts wreaking havoc on your day, week, and month. - You’ll join for the mission but you’ll leave because it’s a joke.