Clueless management churns through employees - Anonymous employee Guidebook Employee Review

1.0
Oct 8, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Weekly beerfests / on-site parties Lots of friendly coworkers The lower-level employees are mostly very good people and you will probably make some friends

Cons

Misleading stock options: Unlike most companies, your stock option cliff / vesting won't start until the *next* board meeting, which could be 3 months after your hire date. your offer letter will *not* reflect this. This is shady, if not illegal Turnover: Very high, and highest among the most-talented and most-experienced employees. Lowest among the good old boys who co-founder the company. Management… is out of touch. If literally everyone except 2 high-level managers/execs said "the new version of our software, which as it currently exists earns us millions of dollars, is not ready to realease yet", would you: A) Delay release until it is free of major bugs? B) Start a beta test with a few clients and iterate until they like the new version better than the old version? C) Say 'ship it' and literally *delete* the old version off your servers and forcibly migrate ALL your users to the new version, and when users complain that your software is bad as Windows Vista, you laugh at them and never make the old version available and force your support staff (who tried to warn you of the impending disaster!) to work 11 to 16-hour days *without overtime*? Can you guess which choice the management at Guidebook chose? Yup. Option C. Middle management: I dunno about all the different departments here, but as far as engineering, the culture seems to only value "yes-men" and long ours. Actually talented and experienced engineers are fired or leave. The same thing happened in the Advertising department. As far as customer service (sorry, customer success) the head is a nice guy who nonetheless is powerless as far as actually getting his underlings to be fairly compensated. Product: newer technological foundations, but not actually better. missing features. deleting user data. going offline a few times a day, regularly. Product management: I am incapable of describing this 'con' in a way which does not violate Glassdoor's guidelines. Career: You will be promised opps to advance your career. and then you will be denied them. So in short, i am dying Lastly: everyone is underpaid and again the stock options are not as good as they sound, for multiple reasons. not to mention you will be fired if you are actually worth your salary, going by current trends.

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5.0
Jan 6, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Very supportive group of coworkers

Cons

Can be a little disorganized at times

5.0
Oct 23, 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Amazing leader, great leadership, exciting product

Cons

100% remote, so not the best fit for those who thrive in-office

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