Don't say you weren't warned - Anonymous employee Handshake Employee Review

1.0
Nov 29, 2023
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You will bond with some genuinely smart, creative, and dedicated people. None of you will have any power or authority to change anything.

Cons

If you’re considering working here and thinking all of the negative reviews are dramatic and exaggerating how bad this situation is, I assure you they are underselling it. Four re-orgs, several massive layoff events, including one leadership tried to lie about. Many reviews have mentioned the CEO, an overgrown child who makes people scramble to his whims and gaslights the company. Engineering leadership is a revolving door of hapless and disillusioned execs who leave with a cushy exit package after accomplishing nothing and making their teams miserable. The go to market leadership playbook consists of two simple things: yell at reports, and hire some white man from a larger company with network connections while simultaneously preaching the importance of diversity. Bonus points when one of those white men gets fired for outright racism. The rampant favoritism is real, leadership and their cronies spend their time insulting their reports in group chats that consistently get leaked. 80% of current employees are looking for another job. I’d suggest working pretty much anywhere else.

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Handshake Response
2y
Thank you very much for sharing your experience. Handshake has gone through a substantial amount of change over the past year, which has been in service of ensuring that we have the right team members and executives in place to accomplish our goals for 2024. We run internal surveys regularly, and take seriously the results from those surveys through conversations at the leadership level, with our managers, and individually between HR Business Partners and the teams they support. We conduct appropriate follow-ups to any instances of harassment or behavior that isn’t aligned to our Code of Conduct, and strive to be a workplace where employees feel comfortable having open and honest conversations with their managers, executives, and the People Team.

Explore other reviews about Handshake

5.0
Jun 12, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Work at your own pace.

Cons

Task limit when new to project.

2.0
Jun 12, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

It's flexible and sometimes the money is OK. I got paid most of what they owed me.

Cons

Generally disorganized. The task I was on was one of the more highly paid ones but it was almost impossible to actually do in the allotted time. You aren't supposed to use AI but I think people must. The tasks run far over the time they are supposed to take. The human review system also seemed almost arbitrary. Reviewers did not have the subject matter expertise they claimed to. You will make less than the advertised hourly rate because the tasks routinely take longer than they say they will. If they have averages that are lower, those people are either not submitting accurate hours (there is incentive not to) or are using AI to train AI, which is a bigger problem (but not yours).

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