FreshBooks Reviews

Pros

Incredible people, friendly culture, great values, awesome customers, openness to change

Pros

Nice people, Good work Life Balance, Nice Office Space

Pros

Great perks, lots of social events, comfortable office, the company invested a lot to become “Great Place To Work”

Advice to Management

Great perks and “Great Place to Work” will help you attract people but not keep them. You need a better HR department, someone won’t hire a non-experienced employee just because they are related.

Pros

Opportunity - I've been at FreshBooks for well over 5 years, and have watched it grow from a 'startup' to a full fledged business. All along the way, I've always had the opportunity to grow and develop here in big ways. I've never felt stagnant, and have been surrounded by great people who work hard and care about what they do. If you put in the effort, you will succeed here. Its been fun being able to watch so many people build their careers here.

Culture - Frequent company events, trips to the cottage, friendly faces, a workplace where people are overwhelmingly supportive and kind, this is the fabric of FreshBooks.

Location - Might be a con for some as it's out of the downtown core, but the Junction Area is increasingly becoming a great place to work/live. Lots of parks, restaurants, and places to grab lunch.

Advice to Management

Its important to keep encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit that makes FreshBooks great, always give employees the resources and opportunity to take initiative and do great things. Not bogged down by process or too much structure.

Don' t get too distracted by profit/short term financial success, never forget about the small business owner that our company is founded on. This is key to our long term growth.

Pros

- fast moving
- open to change
- lots of opportunities for growth (and room to do so)
- transparent & open exec team
- strong learning & development culture
- FUN! as one of the company's core values :)

Advice to Management

Keep living the PORCHFEST values in everything you do.

Pros

I am proud of our vision and the work we are doing. I get to collaborate with talented, creative people from diverse backgrounds.

 I love the open, inclusive environment. I can be myself at work!

Advice to Management

Leadership here is open to feedback and new ideas. This is important to me.

Pros

The Culture at FreshBooks is better than any company that I have ever worked at. It is a pleasure to go to work with such great people who are just as talented. Love the additional social parties and events that help to keep the environment fun!

Advice to Management

Keep the culture strong! Make business decision that can provide the best value to the customers that will result in increased long term value to FreshBooks.

Pros

- strong mission driven culture around helping small businesses and the self employed grow their own businesses
- impressive engineering and product management teams
- high growth company with tremendous opportunities for career progression
- benefits and innovation days are best in class
- commitment to continuously improving diversity, inclusivity and belonging backed by research studies and strategy
- large investment in training for people managers and top senior leaders

Advice to Management

- continue to invest in top tier engineering, marketing and sales talent
- take this amazing brand into more international markets
- get out in the Toronto tech community more to expose this strong employee brand

Pros

Ever-changing business. Always looking at new features. Growing and constantly building out new product.

Advice to Management

Keep shipping

Pros

Incredible open communication from executives, making strides towards an inclusive work environment, fantastic company events, parties and team building outings. I once considered this the best workplace I had encountered in my 10+ year career.

Mike McDerment, the CEO, is an incredibly open and honest leader. He regularly gives talks at the weekly company "Short Hands" lunch gathering, discussing his thoughts and feelings about the direction of the company and other topics, as well as fielding questions. His willingness to engage with difficult questions, which are some times anonymous, is inspiring.

For most of my time at FreshBooks I have enjoyed coming to the office to see my friends, chat with people at lunch, and having meaningful work that improves the lives of FreshBooks customers.

3 weeks of vacation (with yearly carry-over), plus a full Christmas break, 12 sick days, and plenty of fun company events and outings. Company parties every few months really help create bonds between people from different departments.

6 "Innovation Days" per quarter in the software development department are a great opportunity to direct your energy to things you feel are important. You could improve on some part of the app that stands out to you, find a team and collaborate on a complex project, or work on a talk for a conference.

FreshBooks has also started on the journey to make a more "inclusive and diverse" work environment. This is a noble goal and I believe most of the people involved are doing so in good faith. FreshBooks is a very inclusive place to work based on your gender and identity, as we allow people to bring their authentic selves to work. That said, there are some ideological bullies in the committee leading this effort who may hamper their own efforts by alienating people.

Advice to Management

Fix product development leadership. Bring in someone new who has a vision of how to structure software developers to maximize their value. Put pressure on senior/principal developers to focus more on quality code and reusability rather than "just get it done." It is difficult for any developers to obtain full knowledge of the codebase due to its unnecessary complexity. Efforts to improve this are always hampered by apathy and lack of people power.

Develop an ambitious goal for the company and stop playing catch-up.

Be wary of creating a culture of fear around diversity and inclusion. People have expressed fear openly and in private at discussing this sensitive topic due to some ideological bullying and "performative outrage."

Keep embracing Honesty, because it is the most special thing about management at FreshBooks, and the best tool to pull the company through these difficult times.

Note: I am rating "senior management" as a 3 below due to product development leadership, not the exec team. I would rate the exec team as a 5 and product development leadership as a 1.