Pros
This place had all the makings of a truly unique place to work with incredibly bright people who cared about your success, were open to new ideas, and challenged you to grow—albeit sometimes slow moving—and a flexible work/life structure that exceeded expectations. This, by far, has been the greatest group of human beings I've ever worked with. I’m appreciative of all the people I’ve had the honor of working with, learning from, and growing professionally throughout my time there. But let's get into it..
Cons
After about three years of withdrawing from day-to-day operations, and months of being removed as the public face of the company for disparaging comments made on social media, the owner came back in early fall with a vengeance and recklessly shut down the entire Professional Services division without so much as an outline of a go-forward plan. If this sounds shocking, it is, but surprising? Not so much. Despite attracting some of the best talent in the Salesforce ecosystem with Fundamentals and values, the owner could never truly live up to them. He has had to be 'handled' on numerous occasions throughout my tenure for his rash decision making. There are templates for handling layoffs, but seemingly knowing better or simply not caring, any attempt from leadership to steer the ship back on course was thwarted. Basic answers to questions on when, why, and how were met with a bunch of “I don’t knows” from the owner. It took more than two weeks to hear whether the team was getting severance (they weren’t, because it would ‘be unfair to the Apps team’—with later answers being that the team should have been thankful they weren’t let go during the pandemic). Even more time passed before there was any clear guidance as to addressing clients, many of whom had been working with Vicasso for years, some even a decade plus. Executive Leadership was cut off at the knees and not allowed to provide any answers to how to address the situation and the livelihoods of half the staff. And senior leadership was given no direction in addressing how the rest of the company would be moving forward other than, “we’re focusing on apps now.” Zero vision. Zero strategy. But it wasn’t always this way. CEO and former COO was the future this place deserved and supported a culture some companies only dream of having. During the pandemic, leadership was diligent in delivering timely updates and completely transparent. The CEO took care to share with the team where the company was financially and what we needed to do to get back to profitability. I never once worried that things were in bad shape when Felisa was running things. We all banded together and got it done. The precedent on how to handle tough news was there. As long as the founder is back running the show and the executive team is muzzled, there is no world where this is a stable place to work or grow a career.
