Believe the negative reviews and stay away
Pros
I met some of the kindest and smartest people I've ever worked with here. However, they were all individual contributors (non-management) and the majority of them were either "let go" or laid off in the many rounds of workforce contraction that Earnin has had. Um, I guess a dog friendly office is nice too?
Cons
Where do I start? This company is problematic, verging on toxic, in its very bones. To begin with, the senior leadership team has a few well-meaning individuals, but overall, is incredibly ineffective. They pull one another in different directions, contradict each other, and work desperately hard to please Ram - who himself lacks leadership skills and delivers contradictory orders, so it's nearly impossible to actually meet his expectations. He makes decisions based on "feelings" (aka uninformed, biased opinions that are not grounded in the data that employees work so hard to produce) and blames others around him when the results are inevitably poor. There is a sense of demoralized desperation here - many people on staff doubt whether the product will survive, or whether it's actually helping people as a true alternative to payday loans. Others just live in fear of randomly getting told, "We're going in a different direction," which is Earnin-speak for firing you without cause and offering minimal severance (think less than 1 month). In the past, there have also been serious allegations of harassment, workplace bullying, hiring and promotion bias, and other terrible practices that would all make me say, "stay away" to anyone that was considering working here. There were mass layoffs not that long ago, and it seems that employees were never able to recover their morale after that - the company has remained directionless and desperate to stay relevant in a crowded market where there are tons of options for consumers. I'd also say there's a huge problem with hypocrisy. The product is touted as being transparent, beneficial to users, etc., but the company hides key pieces of information from customers and leaves them in the dark when it comes to understanding their credit maxes and such. And Earnin definitely extends NO transparency to its employees, so we have no idea why people get fired, how well the company is doing, etc. Before the mass layoffs, the company was even telling employees a few days in advance that business was strong, the company was doing well, etc., when that was clearly not true. In general, you just won't get an honest answer out of Earnin leadership and management, and that lack of ethics extends all the way through the product itself. If you speak up or try to change things, expect to have a target on your back, especially if you end up contradicting Ram or anyone in leadership who has his favor. Stay away, stay away, stay away.
