A startup job with “perks” and pitfalls - Anonymous employee VALD Employee Review

Thank you for taking the time to review VALD on Glassdoor. Whilst each experience is unique to everyone, we take all feedback seriously. As your review is anonymous, I openly invite you to reach out to me or our Company Secretary/General Counsel (Tim Wilkins) personally should you wish to discuss your experience further. Regardless of whether we get to speak, I offer you my response as a mark of taking your feedback seriously and we are always looking to improve at VALD. At VALD we intentionally set very high expectations with our core belief that anything is possible with hard work, creativity, dedication, and good timing. We also believe and recognise that failure is inevitable and a vital part of the journey to our success. Your comment around unrealistic expectations and no roadmap is disappointing considering we have a series of processes that help to align everyone’s goals. Each team within VALD has their own processes so we will review this to ensure everyone is aware of the roadmap. I personally know that working out what tasks to work on and when to work on can be challenging. One of our values at VALD is Accountability and Ownership at all levels. By speaking up early and often between teams we set ourselves up to achieve these tasks. Our roadmaps at VALD are our big picture, which drive the overall focus of each team member’s weekly plan. Communication is VALD’s best mechanism to avoid failure and quickly turn failure into success when it occurs. Communication comes in many forms. If we make a mistake, the most important thing is to communicate that mistake to the team as quickly as possible. Communication as we scale will continue to be a top priority. There are many ideas that we have for improving internal communication and we will continue to push forward on those. I’m unhappy to hear your comment around alleged objectification and misogynistic treatment of women. I take these comments very seriously and if you would like to share more about your experience please contact me by emailing laurie@vald.com (or our Company Secretary/General Counsel t.wilkins@vald.com) so that we can set up a time to discuss this more, in a confidential manner. Finally (openly shared in our Team Handbook also), working at VALD is not for everyone. If you are uncomfortable with what we stand for and how we work, you are unlikely to thrive long term in the VALD environment. As stated in our Team Handbook, we won’t be offended if you let us know that VALD isn’t for you.