Handshake

Handshake's best asset is its people. There are tons of motivated people who really believe in Handshake's mission.

The tech stack is a bit of a mixed bag, with some areas being very modern while others are stuck in the past. This is typical for a tech company, though, and Handshake is making strides to improve the coding environment for its developers.

Work-life balance is also decent. It used to be much better before some of the more recent culture changes happened, but it’s still not bad.

Upper leadership's ability to lead and inspire is minimal. Upper leadership has made several top-down decisions recently with what seems like little thought as to how the people impacted by their decisions will be affected. Then, when leadership gets negative feedback on their decisions, they seem to act surprised, like they hadn't considered that the decision might not be popular.

Furthermore, there seems to be no accountability for upper leadership. The effectiveness of upper leadership's decisions and initiatives is not tracked anywhere visibly, and if their decision has a negative impact, there appear to be no consequences.

In short, it often feels like leadership doesn't know how to lead, and they are figuring it out as they go. Leadership’s recent attempt to change Handshake's culture seems like a massive misstep. Leadership did not provide much detail for what they wanted the new culture to be, except for "performance," and they did not describe what it was about the old culture they were trying to improve.

Upper leadership needs to rebuild trust with the rest of the organization. A big part of this is having upper leadership take accountability for their actions and providing ways for the rest of the organization to hold them accountable.

Also, figure out what type of company you want Handshake to be and provide a clear vision on how to get there.