Toxic - Anonymous employee Gusto Employee Review

1.0
Feb 22, 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

A few really intelligent, kind people here. Free food in the kitchen, product is making a positive change to the payroll industry.

Cons

Want to succeed at Gusto? Do mountains of grunt work with a smile on your face. Tell upper management that your feel empowered doing this. Do not mention how efficiency could be increased tenfold if you could only implement process A, or have engineering help with project B - you are not here to make to make strategic decisions. Leave the big picture stuff for the managers with the MBAs and Harvard degrees. Adopt the company values as your holy commandments - and for the love of God don't question them. In fact question nothing, and try to slip into as many conversations as you can how you love to delight our customers (note - never joke about this turn of phrase, there is absolutely no joke to be made here). Bonus points if you can insert '#sometritegustobuzzwords' in all of your emails. Accept that god awful management decisions are excusable because that's 'the start-up life' - just sweep under your bulging rug of denial the fact that there are 300+ employees now, and experienced, Ivy lead execs running the show. The key to success here is to eat, sleep and dream Gusto - it's easiest to achieve this by emulating followers of a religious cult. Heads up - be aware that 'success' at this company means avoiding getting laid off, working 10 hour days (no lunch break) minimum, and performing menial, repetitive grunt work. Drown out any ridiculous thoughts of career growth right now - this is easily achieved by reminding yourself that this is a company with no titles and no egos, and consequently no pride, no recognition, and no job title to put on your resume for future recruiters.

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Gusto Response
10y
Thank you for opening up about your experience as an employee at Gusto. We genuinely want to hear your ideas about how to allow culture to grow more organically (i.e., what can we stop, start, continue). I’m sorry to hear that you haven’t felt empowered when sharing ideas in the past and that your work is not fulfilling. We encourage you to reach out to the People team. In case it’s helpful context, the decision to remove titles was based on the reflection that we are a no egos culture that didn’t care about titles. At the time it was announced, we only heard positive feedback that it was so true to our culture, so thank you for sharing your perspective. In terms of career growth, look out for the level attributes that are rolling out this month, which will be a mechanism for career development. Would love your feedback on that front. We also hope that if you feel your ideas and contribution to your team are not being accepted that you please reach out to the People team. We are grateful for any feedback that you might have that can improve the employee experience.

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