If you're reading this review, bookmark the following read: Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble, as 10 years on - it's the same issues, different people.
Dysfunctional management team: APAC Support Management has been on a downward trajectory, fostering a toxic workplace where "business needs" are weaponized to justify poor decision-making. Rather than leading with integrity, they twist narratives to fit their rhetoric, disregarding employees' well-being and concerns. Worse, intention is used as a shield—a flimsy excuse to justify inappropriate statements and behavior that should have no place in a professional setting.
A culture of gaslighting & deflection: Despite company-wide meetings advocating for mental health support, burnout prevention, and using managers as resources, APAC Support management blatantly contradicts these values. Sweeping dismissals like "we're not responsible for your burnout" or "if you can't meet metrics, maybe this isn't the right job for you" are common, even though the metrics in question are often unrealistic, ever-changing, and entirely out of employees’ control. Rather than addressing legitimate concerns, managers gaslight team members, making them question their own abilities instead of acknowledging systemic problems. Employees aren't failing because of personal shortcomings—they're set up to fail by leadership that refuses to listen or adapt.
Incompetent, inexperienced and unaccountable leadership: The managers are glaringly inexperienced, with some promoted from within the team and others pulled from unrelated roles. The result? A leadership group that lacks basic managerial skills, effective communication, and strategic thinking. Conversations feel like a battle where managers force team members to say what they want to hear rather than fostering genuine discussion. They reject feedback outright if it doesn't align with their pre-determined narrative. There is no accountability when concerns are escalated, the management team circles the wagons to defend their own rather than addressing legitimate issues. Instead of transparency, they resort to vague and dismissive responses like "we're not obligated to tell you." (which is laughable as one of Hubspot's culture code values is Transparency).
Rather than fulfilling their managerial duties, APAC Support managers offload their responsibilities onto frontline employees under the guise of “development” or “team engagement.” This results in:
1. Unfair workload distribution—employees being asked to handle tasks well outside their job scope while managers sit back.
2. Busy work with no purpose—extra tasks assigned not to enhance growth but simply to keep people occupied and deflect from the real issues.
3. Micromanagement of trivialities—instead of focusing on real performance improvements, managers obsess over minor issues like chat statuses or arbitrary process adherence
It’s laughable that managers who have been in the same stagnant roles for 2-4 years with no career growth themselves are the same ones telling others to “rethink job fit.” If they had any self-awareness, they’d realize that their lack of leadership, refusal to act, and inability to take constructive feedback are the biggest contributors to the dysfunction within APAC Support.
If these managers actually took responsibility instead of pushing back on everything, things could have improved a long time ago. Instead, we’re left with a work environment where feedback is ignored, accountability is nonexistent, and morale is at an all-time low.
APAC Support is not suffering from a lack of effort from its employees—it’s suffering from abysmal leadership that refuses to listen, refuses to learn, and refuses to lead.
Until there’s a serious overhaul of management in APAC Support - expect more burnout, more turnover, and more excuses.
