Listen to the negative reviews - Anonymous employee Klaviyo Employee Review

1.0
Feb 8, 2023
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Most ICs are great and competent here. The free book program and $3000 education stipend is also great benefits.

Cons

Leadership here is a joke. They are beyond incompetent and caused a great deal of stress and frustration. They hired people remotely and then mandated us to return to office once every six weeks because they opened new offices in some cities. They are tracking this with badge swipes. Failure to meet this expectation will result in termination even with pre-planned PTO and unexpected sickness. The leadership micromanages every aspect of our work. They believe that micromanaging is underrated and that it is the only way to ensure quality and efficiency. They recently underwent a reorganization. However, everything seems to be up in the air and the leadership does not seem to have a clear vision or purpose for the merger. They are even not sure if layoffs will happen due to this reorg. This is causing a great deal of uncertainty among employees, as we do not know what the future holds. The recent culture survey shows 40% approval rating on the leadership team, but they are not taking actions to address people's concerns.

Explore other reviews about Klaviyo

5.0
Jul 6, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good benefits and office environment

Cons

Deep in Boston, but as long as you put in the work it's worth it

1.0
Apr 30, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Benefits, free food, tech talks.

Cons

I had high expectations coming into Klaviyo, but the reality fell far short. The biggest issue is leadership. There is a clear lack of the experience and judgment needed to effectively lead a modern engineering organization. Decision-making often feels reactive rather than strategic, and there’s little evidence of long-term technical vision. Instead of empowering experienced professionals, leadership tends to micromanage as if they’re overseeing a group of junior interns rather than seasoned engineers. From a technical standpoint, the quality of the codebase and product is concerning. Much of the system feels like a patchwork of rushed solutions—often reminiscent of a half-baked college project rather than a mature, production-grade platform. Core areas suffer from poor system design, weak data models, and significant technical debt that is consistently ignored rather than addressed. Project expectations are frequently unrealistic. Leadership pushes aggressive timelines without accounting for the underlying technical challenges or existing debt. There’s little regard for sustainable development practices, which leads to constant firefighting instead of building robust, scalable systems. The result is a frustrating environment where engineers spend more time working around problems than solving them properly. For a company at this stage, the gap between where things are and where they should be is hard to overlook.

7
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