Growing Pains - werkgeversreview Anonieme werknemer bij Beyond Meat

Poorly Trained R&D Leadership Team - The R&D Management team has little to no work experience outside of academia. As a result, they have little understanding of how to manage people from a business perspective and treat many of the employees as grad/undergrad students rather than professionals. The R&D leadership team is not trained to manage a team of 100+ people. Even worse, they are not open to learning basic business management skills to help their teams succeed. - Project Staffing is a Mess: R&D leadership will staff projects with team members without a full understanding of each individuals' experience/skill set. The projects will go on forever and then individuals will be removed from projects as priorities change. Therefore, many will not see their project through to launch (if it ever does launch). - Dead End Careers: The R&D Management has shown, time and time again, that it does not care about the career development of its employees. Many individuals (all who have demonstrated strong capability) have been shot down on multiple occasions and told the excuse that there is no time for career development because the team needs to continue working in their current positions to complete projects. --- The result is the feeling of oppression by management and being stuck in a hamster wheel. The management team also frowns upon people who ask to change departments (i.e. sales, marketing, ops) where scientific knowledge would be highly beneficial (especially in the marketing team). The opportunities for learning ultimately start to stagnate after 1-2 years and the feeling of claustrophobia sets in knowing that you will be doing the same job. - Predatory Hiring Practices: There is a clear discriminatory practice where individuals are hired in as technicians despite having a stronger education and experience background when others of similar backgrounds are hired directly into an associate level position or higher. These individuals are hired in as technicians with the promise that they would be promoted to an associate level position within a few months. However, in reality these technicians work for at least 1.5 to 2 years before they can ever be promoted. --- The excuse from management is that they cannot hire "reliable" entry level technicians to assist the team and instead need to resort to hiring people with backgrounds that should be directly hired in as an associate or even higher. The other excuse is that these individuals are willing to accept these lower paying positions and therefore, if they accept a lower ranking position and are paid less, they deserve it. What management does not understand is that these individuals are coming to work at Beyond Meat for the mission. Whether or not they get paid well is less of a priority than is the opportunity to work on a product that will benefit society. The management team continues to demean its employees by taking advantage of their willingness to be paid less--not realizing that they will only lose employees (potentially to competitors) by not rewarding them with the pay/benefits that they deserve. Reactive Leadership Leads to Out-of-Control Spending - Beyond Meat is primarily a sales-driven company (not a research or mission driven company as it advertises itself to be). The result is a company that will change its priorities at the whim of the CEO's fickle decisions and the clients' demands (be it a QSR or other partner). - Changes Create Frustrations at Every Turn: Changing priorities makes it difficult to predict anything. Teams will go back to square one to re-do projects, making the 3-6+ months of work a waste and require additional spending to re-evaluate new prototypes all over again. All of these changes demand additional time to fulfill the new requirements despite the fact that the final launch deadline stays the same. - No Such Thing as a Free Decision: These changes affect the downstream work fulfilled by the Ops team that is already drowning in projects that have long delayed launch dates. To meet these deadlines, the team contributes to the company's already huge amount of overspending despite their best efforts to reduce costs. Ultimately, any changes result in redoing most projects thus incurring additional costs to already expensive projects. - Poor Use of Time/Money: Chasing after sales is an appropriate thing to do for any company. What is not appropriate is chasing after low hanging fruit. There are many projects that do not help raise the company's bottom line or meet the company's mission/annual goals. This results in diverting major resources to go after this "low hanging fruit" thus wasting everyone's time, money, and energy. - Falling Short of the Mission: The company's mission is to reduce climate change by providing a plant-based diet as an alternative. Working at Beyond Meat, it often feels like it is part of the problem due to the enormous amount of waste that goes into the company's operations. There is little done to reduce plastic usage throughout the company (especially on the product packaging itself). - Quality is an Afterthought: The lack of emphasis on quality is insulting to the people who work at Beyond Meat and the consumers who choose to eat Beyond Meat every day. The emphasis is on rapid development and a quick go-to-market "strategy" with little focus on quality--both in-market and new product launches. Products are not given the time for rigorous testing which results in prototypes failing at the consumer testing phase or worse--once the product is launched and in market. --- Leadership prioritizes the idea of being "first to market" in the most literal way possible, sacrificing product quality at every step. It relies too much on the brand of Beyond Meat and, when the weight of the name finally gives way and crashes, it will not be able to continue standing on the unstable foundation it has built. - Blind Leading the Blind: The lack of strategy development (and just planning in general) in all departments is handicapping the company. The lack of strategic thinking in the product design makes it difficult to develop products with a clear end goal. The lack of planning is also contributing to overspending at all levels. At the end of the day, Beyond Meat does not have a strategy or even a single thought close to "strategic thinking". It only has a sales strategy--if you call "saying yes to every customer demand" a sales strategy. - Burning Cash for Nothing: All this overspending and changing priorities boil down to the fact that the leadership team is forcing a miscarriage on the development process at almost every phase. The goal is to create products that replicate the look, taste, and feel of real animal meat. The end result is nothing close to that. The sad fact is that the team is rushed at every step. Even worse, the team is given little guidance on development due to the lack of strategic planning. There is less focus on developing "good" products and more emphasis on developing products "fast". These missteps and under researched decisions culminate into shoddily put together products that are launched haphazardly under the assumption that consumers will like the product no matter what because it's from Beyond Meat. A Quiet HR - Amidst the mess of the company's lack of structure and wishy-washy decision making, the HR team remains quiet and slow to react. The company has grown exponentially in the last few years and, while it has been a positive experience in some ways, the lack of structure and support from the company has been limited due to the small size and lack of impact from the HR team. The HR team has not experienced the same exponential growth as the rest of the company. As a result, the company has been managed by a very small and under-resourced HR team. - Lack of Communication on Benefits: Additional benefits are slowly coming to the company, but the HR team is slow to communicate these changes. What's more frustrating is the fact that the HR team themselves do not fully understand the benefits they are rolling out. For example, when asked for details about the 401k plan (vesting schedule, matching, cost/fees), they do not have the answers and will either not respond or forget to reply when they say that they will go looking for the answers. - Below-Average Benefits Compared to the Rest of the Industry: The company's benefits, everything from the healthcare options to the vacation policy, is below average when compared to other "start-ups" of its size/type AND other larger food companies. The vacation time is limited to 15 days without the opportunity to accrue additional PTO based on years of experience at the company. The healthcare benefits are moderately priced but are not competitive at all. There are few other additional benefits that they could provide such as gym membership, mental recharge days, dedicated sick PTO, and so on. --- The company is past its start-up phase and is a full-fledged public company. Its benefits match neither its smaller start-up counterparts (such as flexible PTO) or its larger established food companies who provide benefits such as education sponsorships (for master’s programs, certificates, etc). And a quick aside: to continue calling Beyond Meat a "startup" is a joke and insult to actual startups with teams of less than 20 people (vs Beyond Meat's 700+ employees). - The HR team has recently come under new management and grown within the last year--all of which is a good thing for everyone. However, it has historically been under the thumb of the CEO whose lackadaisical attitude towards employee retention has shown little care towards making things better at the company and resolving the large inefficiencies that contribute to the major overspending.