Indeed

Great work-life balance, great benefits. Based on the perspectives of many others, you don't have to grind as hard as in market-leading tech firms, which makes up for somewhat lower total compensation. If you're progressive, you'll love the CEO and how much time and resources he and the rest of the executive team spend on DEIB+ topics.

I drank the Kool-Aid and bought in wholeheartedly, and everything was great for several years. Indeed – at least in the engineering department – had a strong management culture, a history of up-skilling its employees, and was finally ambling down the road of catching up to tech industry standards.

Then Indeed, along with most other tech companies, started over-hiring and over-paying in 2021. By the time 2023 rolled around and the forecasts showed a significant decline in revenue, layoffs followed.

One can't complain about the market forcing the executives' hand. One can, however, question the messaging of "we have a few billion in the bank to ride this out; we are fiscally conservative and are prepared for the downturns" in the months leading up to the layoffs.

One also can't really complain about a business decision to get rid of Quality Assurance as a function – QAs have been getting the "aren't you afraid of your job being automated away?" questions for decades. One can, however, question how poorly the executives understood the QA function's contribution to the bottom line, and how poorly the post-layoff months have gone for the remaining employees.

Lack of a clear plan, executives saying things that couldn't be taken back, and a poorly planned or a completely botched reorg which led to people being stuck with no direction and no meaningful work.

When Indeed followed through on its explicit and implicit promise of "we take care of our employees," one could somewhat uneasily dismiss all the complaints on Blind as trolling. When Indeed laid off 15% of its workforce to preserve profits, and proceeded to bungle the aftermath, all of the Blind trolls started looking a lot more reasonable.

Wouldn't recommend joining the company until there's enough evidence that the ship is no longer taking on water.

Try to get back to as much transparency as you can stomach.