UiPath

Never experienced these; only mentioned during the interview process.

I am writing this because I am just one piece of the "trimmed fat" and "baggage" that some of the current UiPath employees write about in their reviews. After reading quotes from UiPath's leadership team on how they made the "right move" three months after the company axed 400 employees, I knew now was the time to speak up.

At best, this company’s leadership could be considered greedy, sleazy, and tactless. Just scroll through all of the negative reviews published from current and axed employees (and get a nice chuckle from the fake “booster” positive reviews).

As you can read in many respectable tech publications, the company overhyped the RPA market and tried to mislead customers into believing the technology was much more advanced and valuable than it actually was. Unfortunately, customers weren’t buying it, and neither did the press and key thought leaders.

The company hired hundreds of employees in the course of the year to get the self-proclaimed “rocket-ship” off the ground. They then callously laid them off that same year after the employees’ “scrappiness” was no longer needed. The kicker is the company then claimed it was just part of their overall “strategy” to save face from their poor performance. Maybe it was their strategy, but if that’s true, how awful.

It’s worth mentioning that most of these layoffs occurred in the US where employees were handed one month's severance and told this was a generous offering. Most of these employees, including myself, worked around the clock, sacrificing precious time with family to help the company achieve their mission, which they claim in their onboarding deck is more valuable than your personal needs. They continuously preached that “work/life immersion” was necessary in order to work at UiPath, and working less than 12 hours a day was unacceptable. I keep in touch with many of my colleagues that still work there, and people are leaving en masse or are in the process of their exit strategy.

To add color to UiPath's perspective on the layoffs, you only need to read how they respond to media inquiries.

Recent quote and article from a senior leader to a business tech pub on the layoff of 400 employees:

"It was just a natural part of that evolution that you needed to get rid of that baggage. The step was taken to weed out employees who were good for the "scrappy" startup mode but not ideal for scaling the business."

Shockingly, this interview was aimed to redeem UiPath from their poor financial and unethical decisions. Do you think these employees were continuously "scrappy" because they wanted to work non-stop with little resources and personal time? Did these employees leave Fortune 500 companies knowing that in the next 5-12 months they were going to slave their life away to UiPath, be ready to travel anywhere on the drop of a dime with little to no extended notice, and have their hard-earned bonuses revoked, then laid off? That's what UiPath believes to be true. After all, we're just baggage.

Start by owning up to the mistakes you've made and acknowledge the pain, waste, and loss you created. Empathy goes a long way, and customers and potential employees will be quicker to forgive.

Create a more tolerable environment for existing employees, not just for senior leadership. Human capital is your biggest resource.