Keep looking - Anonymous employee AppSumo Employee Review

SOLICITED REVIEWS Be very, very weary - Many these reviews were solicited by the company, and some are even outright fakes (it's pretty easy to tell the fakes because they're all 5 stars, the cons listed are superficial, and they're are all within a few days of each other). This is a pretty good insight into how the company is run overall. REVIEW RESPONSES The more recent reviews on Glassdoor are legitimate, but don't be fooled by the company responses to these reviews. The optics being portrayed is that AppSumo is a "growing company", this is a PR tactic. This is a ten year old company, not a fledgling startup trying to find their wings. Additionally, AppSumo is one of many sister companies under the Sumo Group name, run by the same leadership team. After ten years of business across multiple companies, leadership has proven that employee well-being, and a legitimate company is not their concern, as evidenced by the growing list of employees in their wake. There are growing pains, then there is poor leadership, Sumo Group is the latter. COMPENSATION You will be hired with a compensation package that is not competitive with other companies that are at a comparable level. No signing bonuses, below average yearly salary, and no equity. AppSumo does offer a year-end bonus, but the amount is arbitrary, and based solely on the discretion of leadership. Your ability to attain it is not your own, but rather on the profitability of the company, and leadership's perception of your effort, a metric that is never shared with you. Throughout the year, you will not have insight, or be given feedback on how they see your progress. You should not expect this bonus as part of your compensation. WORK/LIFE BALANCE You will be asked to do things outside of your role's requirements, outside of any sort of normal working hours. Many of my coworkers felt overworked, and burned out, with no signs of relief, myself included. The company does offer unlimited PTO, however, poor planning and vision, paired with the company's never-ending chase for "10x-ing the business" has led to an insurmountable backlog of work, making it very difficult to enjoy the perk. FAVORITISM Most of the remaining AppSumo team is made up of a band of friends that were hired into roles they are not qualified for, then shuffled/promoted around until they settled into a role. Because of this favoritism, your upwards mobility will be severely stifled. These people will be your boss. You can easily browse LinkedIn to see the enormous attrition over the last year by a bulk of AppSumo's more experienced, senior employees. This is a litmus test that should be used when considering employment at AppSumo, or any of it's sister companies.