A company that values their employee and company culture. - Operations Manager Upstart Employee Review

5.0
Nov 30, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Culture: The culture is driven by the employees and this company is filled with smart, caring, responsible, and well-rounded people. The employees here value teamwork, transparency, and accountability. Everyone has a voice and a platform to voice out their feelings, questions, and opinions. There are several ERG groups that you can join - where you can voice out your concerns and celebrate the wins. They have TGIF- where you can voice out your concerns and ask the founders (or any leaders in the organization) ANY questions. If you have any concerns or questions that you don't want to voice out in front of the entire team, you can directly meet with the leads. The leaders here have office hours you can go to. I highly suggest taking advantage of these office hours and pick their brains. Company Values and Mission: The mission of this company is something to be proud of. The mission is to expand access to credit and they are doing exactly that! - This company loves hiring underwriters from traditional banks. These underwriters are often in disbelief whenever they are about to approve a loan for a borrower that would have not qualified their former jobs. Everyone in the company live and breath the following 5 values: -Every second counts -Do the right thing even when it’s hard -Make clever use of numbers -Be smart and know you might be wrong -Don’t assume it can’t be done When it comes to working and getting the job done, everyone leaves their ego out the door. <-- I really miss this. This team does not take any shortcuts. They really believe in doing the right things...even if the right things will require a lot of effort, time, and resources. Leadership: If you're going to be in Ops, you're very lucky. The new Regional Head of Operations in Columbus, OH is phenomenal. The Head of Operation is one of the most caring people I've ever met. She's is an incredible boss and mentor. Other pros: Swag - This company will give you awesome swags - Patagonia vests, North Face jackets, shirts, socks, North Face backpacks, All Birds shoes, picnic blankets, mugs, and water bottles. Tech Budget - You get a yearly tech budget. You can use this to buy headphones, monitors, earphones, and keyboards. Fitness Budget- You get $500 every year that you can use to pay for your gym. Catered Food - Free lunch at the office every day (including weekends).

Cons

The company is becoming a bit corporate and losing its startup identity.

Explore other reviews about Upstart

5.0
Jun 11, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Promising product, competitive pay, lots of work

Cons

Unstable, leadership is hit or miss

2.0
Jun 10, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Compensation. Only reason I don't give them 1 star. - Remote Work - Pretty diverse

Cons

- incredible amount of politics, process, and red tape for an engineering org on the smaller side - Chaos. There were three re-orgs between Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. Actual madness. - High turnover is embraced. They will gladly let go of long time high performers with years of tribal knowledge and hire someone new with more experience. You eventually up with a team where everyone has hardly any domain knowledge. - Fear driven environment. You will hear performance mentioned every week in company comms and how they want everyone to be X% more productive with AI. - Speaking of AI usage, they take it to the next level. Slack messages, Jira tickets, code, design documents. All made with AI. It will be the most overly verbose word slop you can think of and you'll get a pat on the back for being so thorough. My manager seriously told me how she just copied a technical design doc into chatgpt and read that. Wild. - Cutthroat. With the new focus on productivity gains and measuring performance with PR volume, LOC, and token usage, people hardly review PRs anymore because it gets them nothing. Be prepared to spend lots of time begging your team and other teams for reviews and then waiting. Unless you are good at playing politics and have the time / energy for it, I would avoid this place at all costs. If you are just looking for something short term that pays well and encourages you to use AI for any and everything, this place works well, just don't expect to stick around for long as you're considered a veteran at 2 years with all the turnover they have. I'm glad I left for something else when I did because I see on linkedin they've had more layoffs since.

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