What is the salary like at Guild?

Good benefits and pay, nice coworkers on the lower end of the company.

Guild took away holiday time off and only gives one day off for Christmas. So now people who saved up PTO to visit family cannot go as they will not allow you to take Mon/Fri off or use more than 2 days of consecutive PTO or any time off. This is supposed to be a family oriented business yet they make it to where you cannot use saved time of any kind to visit family during the holidays. It is turning into a non family or employee centered business into a 'only the higher management get perks and we work the little guys until they quit' type of business. They are going to run off their own employees. Not including how many issues have happened with college and employee partners and the benefits being taken away from employees. Even Guild has taken away many college programs for employees that we can take.

Guild is an amazing company when you look at it from a high level. Mission-driven, doing good with their product, great press, competitive pay (at least back when I joined), great employee benefits (other than 401k). Most of the people I worked with on a day-to-day basis were good at their jobs and trying their best. I made some real friends there who I would work with again any time. My work-life-balance and expectations were totally reasonable and I never worked more than 40 hours in a week, but this is entirely team-dependent.

Words cannot describe how bloated and top-heavy Guild is as an organization. I've worked at companies with 5x as many employees that didn't have as many directors and VPs as Guild. The extreme waste and inefficiency (and incompetence) coming from the top-down has made Guild an inherently unproductive organization. The amount of time and effort it takes for teams to roll out the most basic new features or services is insane. It seems like all the competent leaders have resigned or been pushed out over the years and this is what they ended up with. Large-scale reorgs happen once a year or more, and it takes months for teams to recover their productivity (if ever). A lot of these "reorgs" are also functioning as quiet layoffs. What were good pay bands in 2020 haven't really risen since then and are now pretty standard. Also the salaries are only competitive through senior levels, The staff+ pay bands are well below leading tech companies and there is a dearth of talent and experience at the top levels of IC. Also the equity sucks compared to other tech companies (and no bonuses).

The mission to expand opportunity for people who have been lock out of it keeps a lot of people going. The pay is great, and the benefits are also top tier.

Constant change with no understanding of its implications. You will be required to do jobs without adequate training and expected to do well with no change in compensation if you do. Expectations are constantly unrealistic. Nobody really knows what they’re doing because leadership puts people in the wrong places and seems to believe that this is the intelligent way to operate. Leadership also needs to lead. Stop allowing some teams to drop the ball on their duties and leaving others to deal with it just because the first team is responsible for sales. Fix it or you’ll continue to lose clients because the rest of the team couldn’t deliver, and you’ll deserve it because you don’t listen and change for the better. Bring back some of the things that made Guild fun. Over the last two years, everything has been removed so it just became drudgery and unnecessary change that your workers must put up with a smile.

Smart, caring people. Massive long term goals with social and business impact that lead to challenging and meaningful work. Competitive pay, great benefits, excellent team culture.

Market dynamics have shifted dramatically over the last 5 years along with macro trends in the economy, impact from the pandemic, etc. The company has gone from from growth to hyper-growth and back to growth again in a relatively short period of time. Guild executives have successfully navigated these transitions but not without some tough decisions including changes in leadership/organization and also RIF's. These are difficult decisions that nobody likes to make but they are necessary sometimes and show up in some of the comments on Glassdoor. I have no doubt the company will build on the success it has had over the last 10 years and continue to thrive.

I had the pleasure of working with some of the smartest, kindest, and most dedicated people I’ve met in my professional career. In fact I don’t think I interacted with a single person working at Guild that didn’t meet that description. Without a doubt the best part of Guild is the people they hire. Depending on your role, you will have ample opportunity to learn and upskill in a variety of areas. In my 2.5 years at Guild I learned more than I ever did in my previous career history, which has set me up for better success in my next role. The pay and benefits are excellent, again dependent on your role as well as the cost of living in your area. The mission is one that is easy to get excited about and want to help build.

Ultimately, Guild wants the world to see them as something different, especially when it comes to culture and putting employees first. In reality, Guild is no different than any of the other tech-adjacent start ups out there. The pay and benefits are great, they make you jump through a lot of hoops to get hired (which can be a pro since as stated above the people at Guild are top notch), but they are not immune to the layoff culture that is so prominent right now. Their most recent RIF felt impulsive and like a desperate attempt to stay afloat, based on the numerous teams that have been left to try and pick up the pieces after coworkers with unique and necessary skill sets were arbitrarily laid off. I won’t say that Guild is somewhere I would tell people to avoid working. Overall I am grateful for my time at Guild, but recent decisions have solidified that Guild is no different than any other corporation out there. At the end of the day, you are a number, and you should not assume you have job security for an extended amount of time while working there. If you can get in, your resume will likely come out stronger for it.

The teams are structured to help you succeed, the pay is great, and the benefits are amazing.

No cons that I can think of.

Good benefits and pay, intresting business model and opportunities to innovate

Culture of favortism and backstabbing

Good pay, benefits, worklife balance

Not sure of the company direction after Rachel's leave

Good benefits, amazing colleagues, remote work

Everything - awful management, constantly changing job duties/expectations, constant rotating door of folks starting and leaving, extremely low pay, no 401k matching, completely arbitrary metrics

Folks that work at Guild are not only smart but so passionate about the education industry and the impact Guild is making on frontline workers. Because of that passion, people are almost always willing to collaborate, even if it's not within their scope. I haven't worked at a place where people were so friendly and not defensive of their work - it feels like we are all working towards one important mission. Also the benefits - remote option, competitive salary, unlimited PTO, all the big holidays off including a week in July, and parental leave is great. I love the flexibility - the majority of folks that work here have kids, so there's a lot of understanding.

Guild moves very fast, so I'd only recommend to those who thrive in those types of environments. You have to be flexible and not too precious about your own work.