Small company comp/benefits, big company BS
Small company comp/benefits, big company BS
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The mission is real, important, and prioritized by leadership. Some decisions, such as small dollar lending, are long-term bets that fit the mission but aren't expected to have any material business payoff in the next few years.
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A lot of smart people and interesting challenges
- Extremely heavy process around quarterly planning, and replanning. Hard to get anything done with so much bureaucracy. This process gets worse every year.
- Eng leadership cares more about optics than impact. Hitting dates and predictability is a higher priority than big swings. Risk taking is strongly discouraged.
- Eng leadership is unempathetic about workload - or anything really. And unrealistic about expectations.
- Flexible time off is a marketing tactic, not real. Hard limits are put in place at the VP level, who have to approve PTO.
- Used to be competitive on pay until the stock dropped 90%. Attempts to pull people out from underwater on stock have not been competitive, encouraging people to leave and rewarding newcomers.
- Layoffs are putting talented engineers' jobs at risk.
- Very low DEI in Eng
- Value impact over optics. Reward people who take risks and get results. Focus less on predictable dates, more on OKRs tied to business value.
- Stop letting unempathetic VPs drive away top performers
- Either make flexible time off real, or stop falsely advertising it so people know what they're getting.
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Software Engineering Manager
United StatesMay 20, 2021I had a fantastic experience interviewing at Upstart. I was doing a time-sensitive search due to the H1B grace period, which I communicated to the recruiter during the screening call. The recruiters and the interview panel agreed to expedite the i
Machine Learning Engineer
United StatesJanuary 13, 2021The process was well organized and included an interview with the recruiter, 2 technical interviews and the final round consisting of the three interviews. The recruiter was very professional and all the replies were very prompt (got the final decis
Software Engineer
United StatesFebruary 1, 2019One 1-hour coding challenge, one technical phone screen, and 4.5 hour onsite. Onsite had 2 system design questions, 2 algo, and 1 probability question. Onsite questions weren't too bad but technical phone screen was pretty difficult. Everyone is ve
