Kraken

As recent as a few years ago Kraken was a fantastic place to work. I never expected to stay as long as I did.

For the first 4 years, I would try and refer everyone I know to the company. The staff, the people directly doing work, are great.

Kraken does full remote work well. The team is global so availability is very high. As an exchange Kraken was quite a nice product and the focus on security was great to see.

The company is litigious.

Just see the Glassdoor warning banner.

This will inevitably scare off honest reviews.

Company culture has nosedived since Jesse stepped down as CEO.

Politics rule all decision making.

Nothing is data driven.

The people making decisions are far too detached from the work and from reality.

Layers of middle management have been added.

New product development basically stopped.

Constant restructuring.

Lots of blaming.

The company's culture document doesn't actually apply to management.

Phrases like "radical transparency" are thrown around while management follows the mushroom strategy, keeping everyone in the dark and covered in crap.

Kraken will hold your final paycheck hostage until company equipment is returned.

In theory it isn't terrible but I believe it is illegal in most places.

CEO is nice but mostly surrounds himself with incompetence and "Yes men".

Upper and middle management are unfortunately terrible and surround themselves with "Yes men".

Lack of accountability.

There have been multiple, massive failures that have led to promotions of those involved.

The same mistakes continue and failures are constantly repeated by the same people in power.

I have personally seen managers involved in these failures bragging about how their headcount goes "only up".

Lots of infighting.

Departments are actively fighting each other while the company stagnates and loses its edge on the competition.

The Product Team is effectively replaced every year and used as a scapegoat for all failures.

For 2023 the Product Team was led by an incredibly unprofessional manchild who would regularly throw tantrums in front of the whole company.

His replacement was completely absent up until my leaving.

The is a massive amount of siloing combined with zero transparency.

This leads to common work being done independently by multiple teams without collaboration.

I've noticed quite a lot of senior people leaving in the months prior to my exit.

All in all it has been quite sad to see so much potential destroy itself from within.

I suppose incompetent management is a tale as old as time unfortunately.