Pros
Middle management is friendly and witty
Cons
top management is old and inexperienced, give hints of snobbishness and arrogance, don't make an effort to listen and learn. Jingoistic culture is encouraged, one of rallying around the CEO. “we have a unique culture” – you will hear this till your ears bleed. Doesn’t every company have a unique culture? They like to think of themselves as different from Rakuten (parent company) and make fun of them but not really. Distributing Badges with CEO's picture (embarassing), diaries with his picture sent to Ukraine. Rakuten does the same. People who are close to CEO and sing his praises get promoted. Praises compensate for incompetence. Rakuten has a similar top down culture. 2 women in leadership of about 8-10, less than 10% of the company reports to them and they speak less than 5% of the time in meetings. Slice boasts of meritocracy, take one look at the CFO and that theory goes out of the window. up until 2016 back they did not know how many people worked at Slice and what each of their compensation was. No points for guessing, G&A reports to the CFO. I have never met another CFO who is so challenged on both Finance and management. There is a very high emphasis on “fitting” into the culture. I found different teams to have different cultures. Most of management don't see any fault in themselves or in their business model or their product or their company culture. I found most employees to be quite green, this being their first job or no big company experience. Seems like kids high on candy. The company is mostly run between the Stanford alums, everyone else is there to support them. They are high on the free money they get from Rakuten and have no qualms in making fun of Rakuten in return. CEO cannot handle difference of opinion and it does not take long to figure that. CFO lack basic ethics and CFO skills. My current CFO is a superstar and can put together more sophisticated models than the entire team put together. I have learned more in 2 days here than in several months at Slice. I did make friends and found the middle management to be smart and witty. Everyone in the company is well aware of the individual who yells at people, in front of the CEO, CFO and rest of the leadership team. And yet the CEO calls it a respectful environment. If top management yelling at subs is respectful, then yes, it is very respectful. I have worked at other places and my current workplace is “actually” respectful. Another favorite is the good cop-bad cop game. It takes a few times to make sense of it. One of the CEOs buddies will play the bad cop. The CEO will sweep in, say he had no idea and start the good cop part. You only need to disagree about something for the shame game to begin. You will be belittled and told how insignificant and replaceable you are. If you express your opinion, CEO says your opinion is not worthy of a response, who asked for a response?!. Will try to control what you say while you worked there and even when you don't work there .. geez No sense of boundary. you manager will take the liberty to text you any time of the day, any day of the week. I worked very closely in the G&A function, with the CFO and sat in executive meetings. My experience was quite forgettable. Even though the CFO wanted me to continue I chose to move on. I am now at a pre-IPO company with a wonderful team. If culture is not a very important criteria or you are still in an entry level position, or looking for a stop before your next move, this might be the company for you. When I took this position, I had more than a couple of offers and chose this one. In hindsight, I could have benefited from a realistic review. Accepting a position is an important career decision. Reviews are just to share the experience so candidates can make an informed decision. Goodluck.
