Ok place to work (grain of salt) - Operations Manager Upstart Employee Review

3.0
Sep 10, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-People are generally great to work with - Culture is laid back - micro management can be at a minimum - decent pay and benefits

Cons

- Inefficient/ outdated internal tooling - Senior leaders may/may not actually have necessary qualifications for the roles they are in (friends hiring friends in at senior level) - Constant inability to manage head count efficiently leading to relentless lay offs and internal “restructuring” - May move you to another role to fill a gap then vacate that position with you in it -virtually no internal mobility past L4 and they will normally hire externally after that level. No real cultivation of talent of current staff -currently utilizing heavy outsourced/third party work force (laid off most internal FTE)

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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