- The founders - No onboarding - Micromanagement - No processes - Toxic culture Just plain weird. If you’ve recently joined Solsten, and you feel like it may be too good to be true, I would encourage you to trust your gut. Sure, the money is great. The product is super interesting. State-of-the-art equipment too. The clients all seem really lovely. The people are smart and very knowledgeable in their field. The three weeks off at Xmas (for those who will still be employed by then) sound wonderful. The illusion of flexible working is also there too (or at the start at least). You will also have heard all about how humane and compassionate Solsten is. How some former employees could not cope with a company that is really that nice and were looking for drama where there wasn’t any. Some people, eh! The founders need to scale, but they don’t want to let go. They are absolutely petrified of adding a second level of management. A good half dozen people have been fired without notice nor (plausible) explanation. It doesn’t help when they are no KPIs in place to track progress. There is no onboarding programme. The little information that is available about the products is not being updated. For the avoidance of doubt, two demo videos to clients, recorded more than a year ago, is not a comprehensive training programme. There are very little resources available and you will be on your own. The founders “have no time to document it all”, and new joiners do not have the knowledge to do it themselves. People in management positions, who do have the knowledge, are absolutely slammed with work. And then you will be told that you should know more by now. Further, the “culture” is all smoke and mirrors. You will be asked to “hang your ego at the door” before walking into the office, but this rule certainly does not apply to the founders. A number of us were told we did not understand the founder’s higher level of English, after a colleague pointed out a badly phrased sentence. The founder doubled down and refused to acknowledge that his sentence was poorly worded, instead insisting that some passages will be re-written to suit a more basic reading level. The co-founder keeps boasting about his wonderful client management skills, and how he regularly sends gifts to some of them (if you've ever had a job in corporate you know that's a bit of a no-no). Anyway, all in all, just avoid this company. The founders have a lot of growing up to do themselves before Solsten can scale.
