Upstart

Machine Learning Research Summer Interview Experience - United States

February 1, 2021

Positive ExperienceGot Offer

Process

Referred by an employee at the company, I started with a phone chat with HR. The interview has four rounds of tech interview, among which the last two are the final round and they are on the same day.

Questions

The required skills are programming, statistics, probability, and some data analysis.

Was this helpful?

Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the Upstart Machine Learning Research Summer role in United States.

Success Rate

100%

Pass Rate

Upstart's interview process for their Machine Learning Research Summer roles in the United States is incredibly easy as the vast majority of engineers get an offer after going through it.

Experience Rating

Positive100%

Neutral0%

Negative0%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Upstart's Machine Learning Research Summer interview process in United States.

Upstart Work Experiences

Overall great place to work

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: The people at Upstart are amazing and the reason to be there.

Cons: Upstart grew too fast after the IPO. They’re still feeling the effects of that.

Overall great place to work

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: The people at Upstart are amazing and the reason to be there.

Cons: Upstart grew too fast after the IPO. They’re still feeling the effects of that.

Bad place to work with good benefits

Data Engineer • Former Employee

Pros: Nothing. They were good when their stock was doing good.

Cons: The toxic work culture has no work life balance.

Bad place to work with good benefits

Data Engineer • Former Employee

Pros: Nothing. They were good when their stock was doing good.

Cons: The toxic work culture has no work life balance.

Pay is great but beware - chaotic, political, and cutthroat environment

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Pros: - Compensation is the only reason I do not give them one star. - Remote work. - Pretty diverse.

Cons: - Incredible amount of politics, process, and red tape for an engineering org on the smaller side - Chaos. There were three re-orgs between Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. Actual madness. - High turnover is embraced. They will gladly let go of long time high performers with years of tribal knowledge and hire someone new with more experience. You eventually end up with a team where everyone has hardly any domain knowledge. - Fear driven environment. You will hear performance mentioned every week in company comms and how they want everyone to be X% more productive with AI. - Speaking of AI usage, they take it to the next level. Slack messages, Jira tickets, code, design documents. All made with AI. It will be the most overly verbose word slop you can think of and you'll get a pat on the back for being so thorough. My manager seriously told me how she just copied a technical design doc into ChatGPT and read that. Wild. - Cutthroat. With the new focus on productivity gains and measuring performance with PR volume, LOC, and token usage, people hardly review PRs anymore because it gets them nothing. Be prepared to spend lots of time begging your team and other teams for reviews and then waiting. Unless you are good at playing politics and have the time / energy for it, I would avoid this place at all costs. If you are just looking for something short term that pays well and encourages you to use AI for any and everything, this place works well, just don't expect to stick around for long as you're considered a veteran at 2 years with all the turnover they have. I'm glad I left for something else when I did because I see on LinkedIn they've had more layoffs since.

Pay is great but beware - chaotic, political, and cutthroat environment

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Pros: - Compensation is the only reason I do not give them one star. - Remote work. - Pretty diverse.

Cons: - Incredible amount of politics, process, and red tape for an engineering org on the smaller side - Chaos. There were three re-orgs between Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. Actual madness. - High turnover is embraced. They will gladly let go of long time high performers with years of tribal knowledge and hire someone new with more experience. You eventually end up with a team where everyone has hardly any domain knowledge. - Fear driven environment. You will hear performance mentioned every week in company comms and how they want everyone to be X% more productive with AI. - Speaking of AI usage, they take it to the next level. Slack messages, Jira tickets, code, design documents. All made with AI. It will be the most overly verbose word slop you can think of and you'll get a pat on the back for being so thorough. My manager seriously told me how she just copied a technical design doc into ChatGPT and read that. Wild. - Cutthroat. With the new focus on productivity gains and measuring performance with PR volume, LOC, and token usage, people hardly review PRs anymore because it gets them nothing. Be prepared to spend lots of time begging your team and other teams for reviews and then waiting. Unless you are good at playing politics and have the time / energy for it, I would avoid this place at all costs. If you are just looking for something short term that pays well and encourages you to use AI for any and everything, this place works well, just don't expect to stick around for long as you're considered a veteran at 2 years with all the turnover they have. I'm glad I left for something else when I did because I see on LinkedIn they've had more layoffs since.

Overall great place to work

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: The people at Upstart are amazing and the reason to be there.

Cons: Upstart grew too fast after the IPO. They’re still feeling the effects of that.

5.0
Overall great place to work
Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee
Columbus, Ohio
July 9, 2024
Pros: The people at Upstart are amazing and the reason to be there.
Cons: Upstart grew too fast after the IPO. They’re still feeling the effects of that.

Bad place to work with good benefits

Data Engineer • Former Employee

Pros: Nothing. They were good when their stock was doing good.

Cons: The toxic work culture has no work life balance.

1.0
Bad place to work with good benefits
Data Engineer • Former Employee
March 9, 2023
Pros: Nothing. They were good when their stock was doing good.
Cons: The toxic work culture has no work life balance.

Pay is great but beware - chaotic, political, and cutthroat environment

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Pros: - Compensation is the only reason I do not give them one star. - Remote work. - Pretty diverse.

Cons: - Incredible amount of politics, process, and red tape for an engineering org on the smaller side - Chaos. There were three re-orgs between Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. Actual madness. - High turnover is embraced. They will gladly let go of long time high performers with years of tribal knowledge and hire someone new with more experience. You eventually end up with a team where everyone has hardly any domain knowledge. - Fear driven environment. You will hear performance mentioned every week in company comms and how they want everyone to be X% more productive with AI. - Speaking of AI usage, they take it to the next level. Slack messages, Jira tickets, code, design documents. All made with AI. It will be the most overly verbose word slop you can think of and you'll get a pat on the back for being so thorough. My manager seriously told me how she just copied a technical design doc into ChatGPT and read that. Wild. - Cutthroat. With the new focus on productivity gains and measuring performance with PR volume, LOC, and token usage, people hardly review PRs anymore because it gets them nothing. Be prepared to spend lots of time begging your team and other teams for reviews and then waiting. Unless you are good at playing politics and have the time / energy for it, I would avoid this place at all costs. If you are just looking for something short term that pays well and encourages you to use AI for any and everything, this place works well, just don't expect to stick around for long as you're considered a veteran at 2 years with all the turnover they have. I'm glad I left for something else when I did because I see on LinkedIn they've had more layoffs since.

2.0
Pay is great but beware - chaotic, political, and cutthroat environment
Software Engineer • Former Employee
June 10, 2026
Pros: - Compensation is the only reason I do not give them one star. - Remote work. - Pretty diverse.
Cons: - Incredible amount of politics, process, and red tape for an engineering org on the smaller side - Chaos. There were three re-orgs between Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. Actual madness. - High turnover is embraced. They will gladly let go of long time high performers with years of tribal knowledge and hire someone new with more experience. You eventually end up with a team where everyone has hardly any domain knowledge. - Fear driven environment. You will hear performance mentioned every week in company comms and how they want everyone to be X% more productive with AI. - Speaking of AI usage, they take it to the next level. Slack messages, Jira tickets, code, design documents. All made with AI. It will be the most overly verbose word slop you can think of and you'll get a pat on the back for being so thorough. My manager seriously told me how she just copied a technical design doc into ChatGPT and read that. Wild. - Cutthroat. With the new focus on productivity gains and measuring performance with PR volume, LOC, and token usage, people hardly review PRs anymore because it gets them nothing. Be prepared to spend lots of time begging your team and other teams for reviews and then waiting. Unless you are good at playing politics and have the time / energy for it, I would avoid this place at all costs. If you are just looking for something short term that pays well and encourages you to use AI for any and everything, this place works well, just don't expect to stick around for long as you're considered a veteran at 2 years with all the turnover they have. I'm glad I left for something else when I did because I see on LinkedIn they've had more layoffs since.

Copyright © Taro