Cerebral

Remote work was the only reason I didn't quit after a month.

I've worked at many startups throughout my career. While all of them have some pros and cons, Cerebral stands out as the single worst across the board.

Leadership is opaque and confusing. Some of them have experience in healthcare, none of them have experience in technology. They regularly make idiotic decisions unilaterally and refuse to hear alternatives.

Engineering leadership is borderline incompetent and extremely rude. They seem to think that because they have a fancy title, that means they have all the expertise in the field and everyone else is an idiot lackey.

Requirements change on a whim, and no one seems to care about the product.

The tech is rickety as hell. High turnover and a lot of unskilled contractors have left the software in a state of disarray. No one knows what anything does, and there's next to no documentation to help.

Some folks made a concerted effort to improve this, but management refused to help and placed as many roadblocks in their way as possible. When some of these issues started getting traction, they fired all the major dissidents as part of an "unrelated" downsizing.

If it wasn't clear already, the culture is terrible. Management deliberately encourages a sort of competitiveness that's extremely unhealthy for employees. Mean, hateful, and aggressive employees are rewarded, while the best people are continuously punished.

Collaboration is discouraged, creativity is laughed at, and any differing viewpoints are mocked.

While the company has "unlimited PTO", you're expected to not use it. After several rounds of layoffs, we were expected to keep the same deadlines. Messages on weekends and after hours are the norm. Work-life balance isn't just deprioritized, it's treated as a joke.

Normally, I wouldn't call anyone out by name in one of these, but I feel the need to discuss both CEOs and their varied and numerous failures.

Kyle Robertson helped to found the company, but not in any useful sense. It was very clear from talking to him that his purpose at the get-go was to provide money. He had rich parents and carried that rich-kid personality well into adulthood. He had no relevant skills or experience, but truly believed, with the whole of his being, that he was the smartest person in every room, and would get extremely angry when questioned.

One of the few positive moves from leadership was an early effort to keep Kyle out of eng meetings. I was ecstatic when he was removed and hopeful about David Mou. That hope didn't last long.

Unlike his predecessor, Mou didn't get angry and scream at people during meetings. Unfortunately, there were no other improvements. He doubled down on every mistake from the Robertson era, and in many cases, came up with his own new bad ideas. His singular goal is to drive shareholder value at the expense of the customer. He very clearly has no understanding of the medical industry, technology, or business.

Don't work here.