Phenomenal benefits. That's the only upside. - Identity Theft Specialist Upstart Employee Review

1.0
Apr 10, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Medical, dental, life, vision - all forms of coverage are fantastic Regularly scheduled bonuses based on performance

Cons

When Upstart laid off 20% of employees in February 2023, they selected who would go at random with no input from managers or other direct superiors. When asked for details, HR refused to say anything except "macroeconomic environment" and were quite rude during the layoff conversation. - Company does not value fraud prevention. Fraud team has to claw for every scrap of funding or attention. Engineering team refuses to implement MFA/2FA despite rising concerns about account takeover because it would mean fewer loan applications. - Communication within the company was terrible. Everyone is siloed. Huge changes would roll out without teams being notified at all. - Monthly meetings focused almost exclusively on productivity numbers rather than quality. There were several times where top-producing employees were also letting fraudulent applications slip by with a minimal amount of review because the time expectations are so rigorous that there is no time or real encouragement to be careful/thorough.

Explore other reviews about Upstart

5.0
Jun 11, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Promising product, competitive pay, lots of work

Cons

Unstable, leadership is hit or miss

2.0
Jun 10, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Compensation. Only reason I don't give them 1 star. - Remote Work - Pretty diverse

Cons

- incredible amount of politics, process, and red tape for an engineering org on the smaller side - Chaos. There were three re-orgs between Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. Actual madness. - High turnover is embraced. They will gladly let go of long time high performers with years of tribal knowledge and hire someone new with more experience. You eventually up with a team where everyone has hardly any domain knowledge. - Fear driven environment. You will hear performance mentioned every week in company comms and how they want everyone to be X% more productive with AI. - Speaking of AI usage, they take it to the next level. Slack messages, Jira tickets, code, design documents. All made with AI. It will be the most overly verbose word slop you can think of and you'll get a pat on the back for being so thorough. My manager seriously told me how she just copied a technical design doc into chatgpt and read that. Wild. - Cutthroat. With the new focus on productivity gains and measuring performance with PR volume, LOC, and token usage, people hardly review PRs anymore because it gets them nothing. Be prepared to spend lots of time begging your team and other teams for reviews and then waiting. Unless you are good at playing politics and have the time / energy for it, I would avoid this place at all costs. If you are just looking for something short term that pays well and encourages you to use AI for any and everything, this place works well, just don't expect to stick around for long as you're considered a veteran at 2 years with all the turnover they have. I'm glad I left for something else when I did because I see on linkedin they've had more layoffs since.

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