Gogo Reviews

Most people still working at Gogo don't want to be there anymore for many of the reasons outlined below (and more). Financial Instability: Over the past year, Gogo’s stock price has plummeted over 50%. The company is unprofitable and burning cash at an alarming rate. The CEO has publicly acknowledged that Gogo needs additional capital to survive. Either the interest payments and debt will bankrupt the company, or it will be sold to some poor sap who will decide what to do with the remaining employees. Top Heavy Management: Gogo has an overwhelming number of VPs and Directors, but it will take awhile to figure out what most of them actually do. Inflated titles leads these people to feel like they should weigh in on every decision. As a result, even seemingly simple decisions are routed to the Executives. Unclear ownership also leads VPs/Directors to constantly second guess each other because no one really knows what’s going on anyways. Directors spend the rest of their time randomly jumping into situations while adding no value in an attempt to make it look like they’re contributing. High Attrition: Turnover has been high for several years, but fresh bodies were consistently recruited to mask the problem. Overall employee count rose for a couple years until recently when all open requisitions were frozen and a layoff occurred. The layoff was not substantial enough to properly reorganize the company, nor will it be sufficient to alleviate the financial woes. Instead, it seems to have been a wakeup call to the company’s talented employees who have been fleeing in droves. The employees who remain are mostly checked out and looking for new jobs. Lack of Accountability: Excessive levels of management also serve to insulate the Executives and SVPs from learning the truth about mistakes, issues, and poor decisions (of which there are many). Each level is incentivized to cover up a problem so that by the time an Executive hears about it, the story has become so convoluted that no one can figure out the truth. There is no sense of scale or scope when it comes to what each level of management is accountable for at Gogo. Clueless Management: In additional to the disjointed structure, it is clear that many of the VP/Director ranks were successful following the mantra “fake it ‘til you make it”. Many of those who make up this crusty level of management are visibly in over their head. Many have been with the company since before its rapid growth and simply are not capable of effectively leading teams or projects at a quickly growing public company. It’s amateur hour. Uncollaborative silos: It’s hard to imagine a less collaborative environment especially considering the small size of the company with most of the employees based in the Chicago office. The left hand truly does not know what the right is doing. This issue is related to both the top heavy and clueless management in that people spend more time trying to hide mistakes than working together to find solutions. Lack of Process/Documentation: At first, the complete lack of any documentation on anything can be frustrating, but after awhile it becomes something of a joke for more tenured employees. Someone will ask in a meeting if a particular change to a process/design/order was documented and everyone will have a good laugh knowing that no such thing exists. If something happened 6 months ago, good luck finding any background on it.

I would like to start with how my Gogo journey ended, my exit interview. It was scheduled for 30 minutes. I arrived at my HR business partner’s office. I waited, and waited, and then waited some more. My HRBP was over 10 minutes late to a 30 minute exit interview. Once we finally got started, HR asked me 2-3 brief questions and seemed completely disinterested in what I had to say. The entire exit interview lasted 15 minutes, including the first 10 minutes of me waiting. I figured this is what would happen, but still surprised. I would expect as a company, that exit interviews would be valuable information on why some employees are leaving. That way they could try to make the company either better, improve employee experience, or maybe fix an issue that exists. I have read other responses from Gogo HR about all these Gogo initiatives that are going in now or have been there to help improve. The problem is if you are not listening, nothing will change. You could have 300 processes and it won’t matter. Just like the employee survey, where nothing has ever changed. I had been with the company for a number of years and although these “initiatives” are in place it has only gotten worse. I left my exit interview feeling disregarded, this was a great reminder why I was leaving. I had a lot of doubt about leaving, but once this happened, I knew I was leaving for a good reason. Because if HR could not even show me common decency, like showing up to the meeting they scheduled. How could anyone else in the company. Management Gogo management 101: “If it’s worth doing, they must have at least three different teams doing it, all triplicating work and resources with zero communication.” The horrible toxic self loathing management. Where to begin. I think if you read through many reviews you will see complaints about management. There’s a reason. 1. Communication - between each layer of the company there are break downs in communication or simply no communication. 2. No vision or direction. No one has any idea what the true vision of the company is, nor their department, their group, and most times even what their job is. No one knows which department is doing what work since their boss has no idea, and their bosses boss either cannot be found or is confused as well. 3. Clear favoritism. This is between entire departments and individuals. We all know favoritism is going to happen sooner or later in any work environment. The problem at Gogo is they do not try and get rid of it, it is embraced and part of the Gogo culture. Some departments are allowed to spend almost endless capital. Other departments are allowed to hire at will, even during “so called” hiring freezes. Some managers are very blatant in their favoritism of employees, it is well known. I honestly don’t even care to get into it. Suffice to say some employees are untouchable. 4. Too much management, the org cart looks like a redwood. 5. Unqualified management. There are countless managers, director and VPs who have no business in their job. One particular management level job requirement was 10+ years in industry. The individual they hired had just over a year of experience, most of which was at Gogo. This was just the first requirement on the list by the way... The VPs I understand that VPs are part of management. But they are so special at Gogo they deserve their own category. For starters, Gogo has so many VPs, some with direct reports, which begs the question. Why are they a VP, and not just a manager? But why waste time contemplating that conundrum, there are VPs of no one... (sigh ...) Now past the VPs of no one. Most are looking to gain more office territory by trying to steal other VPs departments. Every 6 months there is either a small reorganization, or a major reorganization. Each time some VPs gain more office capital by getting more employees and departments. Even if they don’t know what they do, or have plans to continue the work they were doing. This is the constant state at Gogo. Everyone has to wait for the VPs to settle their disputes in order to get back to work. That’s if they even have a job, or all their work is now irrelevant and have to start over on something new...until the next reorganization. Working with VPs. When a new VP comes into a project or task, they state an idea that everyone has had for the past 10 years and claim it as their own “NEW” idea. Now since it is Gogo, it is now officially a new idea in Gogo-land terms. Until the next VP, usually 6 months to a year, is put on that project and come up with a “NEW” (same) idea. Now under the wonderfully “NEW” idea. These VPs will ask multiple departments usually around 30-50 people minimum to meetings to talk about their “NEW” idea and how they are going to fix it. Well this is good, let’s get communication between departments to fix the issue! Not exactly, this only means for the next 3-6 months everyone will waste their time in meetings, building reports for this VP. Only that VP will never make a decision on what to do next, besides stating their “NEW” idea. By the end of this cycle most people involved stopped going to the meetings—usually the VP first—and this whole initiative is dropped. Again, until the next VP has a “NEW” idea. Project + product management Little so say on product and project management side other than they have no idea how the products works, the technology involved, who the key players are in making it work, and simply don’t care to hear anyone else’s opinions that don’t support theirs. They are basically the masters of useless excel sheets. Quality. There is zero focus on quality in everything that Gogo does. This is why there is at almost all times a red alarm going off, because some new crisis just started and every single issue boils down to lack of quality. Example: The software is complete and utter garbage, good luck debugging an issue or even finding someone to help. There are things called best practices, I’m not sure Gogo has ever heard of them. Gogo culture. “Not my job, talk to so and so” Gogo culture is a very unique thing in all the wrong ways. Most of what encompasses Gogo culture is back stabbing, lying and trying to push others down, so they can move up. Gogo doesn’t reward those who work hard, work as a team or those who follow to the proper channels. Basically if you want to find the best example of what a work culture should not be. Look no further! Human Resources. HR is one of the biggest problems at Gogo. If you have an issue and feel the need to discuss with HR. First write down your issue on a piece of paper. Then take your piece of paper, and throw it in the trash. This will honestly help you out, and you will get a better result. If you do actually discuss your issues with HR, they will essentially do nothing and ignore it (just like every employee survey). I would say Gogo needs to clean house with some of their HR, but it won’t matter, since they will quit in 6 months to a year anyway and you are left with another HR person who doesn’t care