Working at Slower

Slower (hilarious name, considering how quickly people quit) is run by some of the most incompetent and deceitful people you’ll ever meet. If working for a narcissistic, pathological lying con man sounds appealing, congrats. You’ve found your forever home. Just make sure you’re cool with delusion, chaos, and a leadership team that treats accountability like a rumor. The CEO lies like it’s his full-time job. He’ll make up numbers about the business, the finances, the employee count (claims 9,000+, yet personally interviews every single candidate), and just about anything else he’s asked. LinkedIn shows fewer than 50 employees, but who needs facts when fantasy works just fine? Then there’s the GM. The fake hype man with no real title and even less responsibility. He runs around acting like he’s solving problems, but mostly exists to echo the CEO’s nonsense and pretend dysfunction is part of the strategy. If you enjoy being gaslit by someone whose job is essentially “vibe manager,” you’re in for a treat. They justify not having a website by claiming they’re in “stealth mode” because nothing screams innovation like hiding from the internet. What they do proudly offer, though, is a bizarre manifesto called “What it takes to be a 100x engineer” that reads like it was written during a 2 a.m. Red Bull bender. It’s less of a hiring guide and more of a cult recruitment brochure, packed with meaningless buzzwords, loyalty pledges, and the subtle suggestion that needing rest makes you weak. You won’t find a careers page, but they’ve got a PDF that’ll make you rethink your life. For the record, Slower has been FTB suspended by the State of California since 5/1 and is legally not supposed to be operating. But why let minor legal status issues get in the way of pretending you’re building the next unicorn? There is no HR department. Employees are told to send concerns to a generic “AskHR” email, which just routes to the CEO’s personal cell phone. Yes, seriously. It’s not a system that’s broken. It’s a system that never existed in the first place. None of your issues will ever get resolved. If your paycheck is off, good luck. Just like others have experienced, the CEO will start strong by sending you calendar invites, then pull a vanishing act. He won’t show, won’t follow up, and when you finally corner him, he’ll blame it on someone else or say ADP is having “technical issues.” He’s used that excuse on so many people it might as well be company policy. Kind of amazi

There are no pros of working with this organization. Absolute chaos, constant lies. You receive a paycheck.

No perks or benefits that I can think of. They don’t share benefit costs up front. They don’t have a 401k match.

Everything about it.

Nothing. It’s all smoke and mirrors.

Looked up what barely exists of them online

Below average. Bonuses don’t get paid.

Not great. Don’t know other slower employees, embedded into client site right away.

You get paid

CEO is a pathological liar.

Salary + bonus seemed competitive, until I found out no one was receiving their bonuses. Like, no one. Made me realize how much I appreciate my subsequent job!

7 days a week grind culture - like, everyone on my team was literally on 7 days a week. Extremely minimal PTO. Thrown into the fire with clients, with no support from managers. Worthless, pep-rally meetings, accomplishing nothing, except celebrating the employees who were the most available 24/7 and unhealthily busy. Promise of 401k, not delivered. Secretive culture: supposedly ~3000 employees (which I flat-out do not believe, in the end), but ZERO information on anything at all with the rest of the company, beyond my ~50 person group - very strange, unsettling and annoying. Interesting character, the CEO, but very hot/cold re: friendliness/kindness, super cagey, and seemingly insanely greedy. Manager: very charismatic and seemingly a nice guy, but completely unsupportive of employess, and also seemingly super greedy.

Next to none, except my team's onsite in Irvine, CA. Which was super lavish, with mostly great speakers, top-flite catering, and an over-the-top hotel room. It was mostly a very good experience (if grindingly long days, but...fair), but made me realize just how profitable this company actually is (vs: ultra-craptastic life/work balance and not following through on promised benefits e.g. 401k and bonuses).

Not much at all, except their ability reel in talented employees and lucrative contracts (except...with no benefit to folks in the trenches)

#1) ransparency. Sure it's a privately held company, but employees deserve to know at least a sliver of what's really going on. #2) Not grinding employees into the ground. No matter what you do, you will not be recognized for anything apart from destroying yourself with the workload.

The usual, for a tech position. Interview process was a joke - won't bother to get into it.

Seemed great, with the promised big bonus, but bonuses did not happen. Without that, it was average (not taking the workload into consideration). I'm on to much greener pastures now, with a MUCH better culture.

More diverse than the average tech team, for sure

Woring at Slower being in my past.

The experience I gained working with assigned clients

Missing my 401k money that was deducted from my paycheck, pay statements, W2 forms and proof the money deducted from my paychecks for taxes was sent to the IRS and state of California.

None

There is nothing to like

Management should follow basic state and federal employment laws.

Bonuses are never paid. Excuses are made instead of solid feedback and conversations are punted. Someone is always 'working on it'.

They use a great bait and switch to attract great talent, but cannot retain them.

Honesty and integrity. The lack of it at Slower is why I left.

Working alongside skilled people.

Slightly isolated

Creative freedom, challenging deliverables

They provide a lot of access to resources if you want to learn

Things get processed really slowly, employee retention is low, a lot of cracks between the lines you would notice when you work there long enough