Pros
Many of my peers became my good friends. Unfortunately, several of them have been laid off. Many of my managers were encouraging mentors that actually made a difference in my life. The building is pretty nice. Plenty of amenities and employee resources. When the company isn’t burning to the ground, there’s a pretty good culture. Lots of parties with good opportunities to network and make friends. Sometimes the executives learn from their mistakes. For example, the second round of 2019 layoffs was handled much better than the first. The bathrooms are always very clean.
Cons
The CEO, Patrick Byrne, is an insufferable blowhard who treats the company-wide email distro like a personal platform for Ted Talks and hot takes. He misses no opportunity to send lengthy, onanistic emails wherein he mansplains Bitcoin, blockchain, stocks, the marketplace, the virtues of libertarianism, and the reason he dresses himself like a Shaolin monk. There’s a fundamental disconnect between the executive team and those working behind desks. This disconnect is the result of gaslighting and faux-transparency from the execs. While we did get shown the company’s numbers every once in a while, it seemed we never really got the full story. When things went south, those of us at the bottom paid the price for decisions we had nothing to do with. Every six months, it feels like you’re working for a different company, and your job (if you still have one six months after starting) might be completely different in terms of goals and workload. Whatever you were doing for the last six months quickly gets forgotten or struck down as a bad strategy. Execs try to sugarcoat the company's volatile and erratic nature by saying that Overstock is agile and adaptable, but it’s demoralizing and makes you feel like nothing you do matters. I know that a lot of this isn’t unique to Overstock. Plenty of companies struggle with similar issues, but Overstock tries to build an allure around being better than other companies. It isn’t. The recent layoffs made many of us feel that Byrne miscalculated and is desperately scrapping what’s left of the retail company to fund his other business interests. Byrne has publicly stated that he wants to sell the retail company, and it really shows. We feel like wood being burned to keep tZERO warm. The bathrooms are always crowded. Gotta go? Prepare to do a lap around the building to find a vacant stall.
