Pros
Excellent pay, bonuses, RSUs, benefits. Overall comp is exceptional.
Cons
In less than 1.5 years at Freshworks, I witnessed at least six major rounds of layoffs. The company loves to talk about its "kudumba," or family (cringe), but it has zero commitment to its employees. I've been laid off before, and this one was by far the worst: cold, unempathetic, tone-deaf, and terribly timed. The layoffs also show a huge management information gap -- several of the top performers in my department were laid off. Firing 600 people was timed with a good earnings report so the stock would go up, which worked. This is pretty much all you need to know about what Freshworks is like now. The pace of work is often frustratingly slow. Communication is a nightmare, with folks on the West Coast and India working on exactly opposite hours, leading to lots of meetings in the very early morning and late at night for everyone. Relatively small projects that should take a couple of days at most take weeks because they're punted back and forth across the globe. Freshworks is forcing everyone into one of their offices (many of the layoffs were remote employees) even though all my colleagues were was less productive in the open office. Most of my coworkers either arrived very early in the morning to take meetings with India or would take morning meetings at home and drive in before lunch. Then we'd leave as early as possible to beat the horrific traffic home and log back on to work into the evening. Freshworks employees spend hours commuting just to badge in and out and then spend their day in conference rooms or phone booths talking to people remotely. It was mandatory 3x/week in-office when I left, likely to go up soon, and leadership has provided no evidence that this hardship (which falls entirely on the employees) is paying off at all. The evidence seems to be to the contrary: They've lost multiple top contributors to this requirement and have poisoned their culture over it. Hope it was worth it. Freshworks suffers from a mix of a few particularly toxic elements: an in-office mandate, an always-on work culture, a high volume of very resource-intensive meetings that constantly run over, and the worst possible time difference between its largest offices and HQ. People are burned out and angry, but everybody keeps going on fumes because the ax is always hovering. If you're considering a job there, make sure the comp is worth it and keep your resume updated.
