Pros
• An innovative marketplace concept with genuine category-creating potential • Competitive pay for London-based roles (you have a $60k USD ceiling in Bogotá) • High autonomy and scope to ship; strong individual contributors can stand out and make visible impact • Easy to stand out among limited talent pool
Cons
• 60% of global workforce (30+ people) are in Bogotá. They are all engaged via Deel Independent Contractor arrangements, but routinely directed like FTEs (fixed hours, office mandates, performance reviews). This blurred the contractor/employee line and created ongoing anxiety internally about local labor-law exposure • Roles were marketed with equity potential, but in many cases nothing is ever formalized in writing or granted. Several colleagues reported similar experiences, which eroded trust • A small group of excellent performers carry outsized weight. Legacy hires with high comp set optics challenges, while newer high-performers who voiced concerns sometimes exited (or were exited) quickly, which had a chilling effect on healthy debate • Most of global workforce trapped by USD salaries (2-2.5k) in weak local markets, creating culture of fear where challenging leadership means termination • I observed aggressive outbound programs that appeared to rely on scraped contact lists and automated outreach that may conflict with platforms’ terms of service. Risk/return trade-offs here felt under-discussed • Product direction was set by non-technical leadership. Over multiple years this produced limited tangible progress relative to headcount and spend, with frequent pivots and shifting priorities • Internal conversations often emphasized fundraising and near-term valuation milestones over durable product-market fit and operational maturity • Day-to-day communication norms (top-down) could skew to informal and gossipy, which isn’t a fit for everyone and makes cross-team collaboration harder