SiteMinder is a company run by children pretending to be adults. The management dis-empower staff from decision making, keeping everyone in the dark like mushrooms. The result is a culture of fear, blame games and distrust. As a company it has the worst "clique" cultures I have ever experienced. You can come to the office and everyone (other than the lovely receptionist and IT guy) will literally blank face you and not reply to your small talk greetings. If you aren't in the in crowd of certain teams, well you may as well not exist. Which is frankly an awful culture and no wonder that staff generally want to avoid their office at all costs. In terms of office - it's large and modern and highly inconvenient for anyone who isn't a multi-millionaire. Your commute will be excessive because it's 25 minutes walk from the nearest train station. But management don't care as they all sit pretty in their mansions that are within driving distance. The company is one of rampant gaslighting and is quite toxic. Their current stick to beat staff is that remote and hybrid working has made staff lazy. So you better come into the office so we can monitor you (where you can enjoy the toxic and hostile culture!) A problem best articulated by the company's 5 focus areas - the last of which being about staff. Which sums up the problem nicely, at SiteMinder the staff, yes you reading this, are last. The real problem is not individual contributors or the effort of staff. The real problem is management and hangovers from it's start up days. The CEO is a dingbat who is distracted by the newest shiny toy. There is no company vision or strategy. Everything is just floating in the wind, going from shiny "growth" idea to the next shiny "growth" idea. The man couldn't articulate a company strategy even if he asked ChatGPT and got one made up for him. The senior leaders have limited experience in actually leading. Many of them have "grown" with the company from start-up days - i.e. they have been promoted, but they lack the experience, training and personal attributes to actually lead. The result is overbearing control freaks who put their own interest ahead of collaboratively working with their teams and the teams around them. There are also more "Chiefs" than there are on the bloody Chiefs rugby team (Hamilton, NZ ;)). This leads to many small portfolios of competing priorities that fight over the limited headcount and resources that are left over from the huge sweatshop of headcount in Manila. Each of these 10 or 11 Chiefs then fight as feudal lords for their own priorities. The winners are always Sales and the former CFO (now Operations Chief). All of which leads to a dysfunctional company where the staff are last, the software is second last and flogging crap via a humongous boots on the ground sales team is first. Ultimately if you can thrive in a dysfunction like this, or are a malignant sociopath then SiteMinder may be for you.
