6y
I’m so sorry to hear you had such a negative experience!
First of all, I can speak for myself, our Leadership and our managers when I say that we care about every Connector. And when I say we care, I don’t just mean it as a platitude. It is deeply and sincerely true. It’s frustrating to hear that you could feel this way when I know how hard our leadership works to try to make the Connector experience amazing. But it can be true that we care and try hard, and also true that you experienced what you described. I take responsibility for that and apologize.
I think it’s helpful for everyone reading this to know that Connected is experiencing some of the common growing pains that come with scaling past 150 people. This is a common threshold that all companies struggle to evolve through. We weren’t much smaller a year ago when you described things as better. But these growing pains can show up in delayed and unexpected ways at this size and that’s why it’s important we adapt quickly. Connected is full of smart, kind and ambitious people. We’re intent on scaling not just to be big for the sake of it, but to maximize the impact and opportunity for a larger group of Connectors and partners. I wish we could move faster on all of these fronts at once! But we are making significant progress quickly and getting better at supporting and lifting every Connector. Like those who have scaled through this threshold before, we’ll make it.
Even though this is a negative review, I’m grateful for it. It allows me to speak directly about where we’re at in our journey for others who are considering joining Connected. We’re not a startup anymore, but we’re still not a scaled-up, well-oiled impact machine. Regretfully, there are some people - you included - who joined an organization that couldn’t live up to your expectations. For others, this point in the Connected journey is exactly the scaling-up environment that they want to experience and contribute to first-hand.
Lastly, I want to speak about our projects. I’m compelled to defend our client mandates and the unique trust we’ve earned to execute on such critical products. I know I am biased, but I’m hard-pressed to find a more impactful and challenging set of projects at any other product development consultancy in North America. And Connected has never had a bigger or more diverse pipeline in our history than we do now. A big thank you for the efforts and success of our growth teams and practitioners responsible for driving this pipeline of exciting projects.
Thank you for your review. I am sincerely sorry that your experience was not what you had wanted it to be. We started this company to provide the complete opposite experience for Connectors. Engineering at Connected is the foundation of our practice and, along with Product and Design, it is essential to our vision of becoming the leading Product Development consultancy. Please feel free to reach out to me personally at mstern@connected.io if you’d like to continue the dialogue. I wish you the best in what’s next for you and I hope we can rebuild this relationship so that one day you can feel proud to be a Connector again.
- Mike Stern, CEO
