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No Leadership or Vision

Software Developer
Current Employee
Has worked at Headspace for 2 years
April 30, 2017
2.0
Doesn't RecommendNegative OutlookDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros
  • Very flexible hours.
  • Lack of vision and leadership makes for easy-to-hit deadlines.
  • Lots of energizing and fun co-workers.
  • Incredibly high pay.
Cons

Despite the flexibility and slow-moving nature of the company, this is not a place to grow your career. It's very easy to get stuck here hoping leadership will either be replaced or finally learn how to run a company, as you cheer for the mission. But you realize after a year that you stuck around because of the high salary and vision that will never come to fruition.

Leadership is inexperienced and needs to be replaced. No one knows how to run a digital subscription company, and the few external people brought in with this experience always end up leaving within months. The engineering team is a black hole that moves at an inexcusable pace given their size, and nothing major has changed with the product since I joined the team 1.5 years ago. We've tripled in size, but the product has stayed the same. The company is burning cash and not producing subscribers.

Advice to Management

The leadership team needs to be rebuilt. People in positions due to being friends with the founders need to acknowledge their inability to lead and step down so that experienced people can move the company forward.

We need a real CEO that's capable of execution, hiring properly, and ultimately having enough confidence in themselves to empower the leaders they bring in to execute against what they're hired to do.

Stop focusing on being famous. The goal is to bring meditation to the masses, not to go on TV shows and sell a $13 meditation to the 1% of people that can actually afford that.

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