Sarcasm aside, the outward face of Workhuman and the inner workings are two very different things. Go to Workhuman Live and you will hear all about building a great employee culture and valuing your employees. None of this is practiced at the company itself. It’s a complete lie. And after a while, living that lie starts to wear on you as an employee. There is a culture of bullying that comes straight from the top. You are either in the inner circle or you are not. You constantly feel like you are under a microscope and with one wrong move, you could be gone. But then ironically, others are allowed to glide for years with no accountability. They keep having layoffs, both large scale and silent, when they could make practical cuts and implement basic cost savings. For example, they still serve hot buffet lunches in the office every week and spend thousands on employee events, while then cutting bonuses and freezing hiring for much needed positions. They built an over the top, extravagant, way too large office in between two huge layoffs. Free food and a cool space is nice, but it gets old when you haven’t had a meaningful raise in 5 years and don’t have the people or tools to do your job. The message this sends to employees is that leadership does not care about employees, only their own egos and outward image. There is a completely toxic environment where there is no trust. Leaders of different departments are clearly at odds and protecting their own teams, which kills any real collaboration or progress. This is probably most prevalent between the Product and Engineering teams, who should be in lock step. Instead, it’s a huge battle to get even the smallest piece of functionality shipped and the quality suffers. It doesn’t help that senior leadership is constantly redirecting the road map to their latest whim. Ironically, for a company that preaches about psychological safety, there is none at Workhuman. Those who speak up or dissent with senior-most leadership are gone immediately. People simply trying to stand up and do the right thing by customers and their colleagues. That fear is noted and people stay silent. It’s a shame because it used to be a very special place where people truly cared about each other, but now it’s just a bunch of leadership infighting and toxicity.
