Pros
Direct management is almost always a pleasure to work with. My PE's (managers) across two separate departments with Gusto have both been extremely friendly, empathetic, and supportive.
Cons
Career-altering changes like layoffs and alterations to core benefits will be communicated through emails during the workday. Your own managers will not be informed of these changes. Instead, upper management works unilaterally and abruptly. They then hold all-hands meetings to field questions that they will actively dodge and dismiss while they talk about how transparent and progressive Gusto is. Here are some changes from the last 3 months: Layoffs despite blatant communications that they would not occur. Minimum time in your current role extended by 50%. Flex PTO taken from non-exempt employees- replaced with a standard accrual system that begins with no time accrued regardless of how much PTO you have taken in the past year. WFH benefits are taken away if you are within a 1.5-hour drive of a local office- does not matter if you are and have been fully remote without a manager or team base on site. Minute-by-minute time tracking for hourly employees, except the time track actively shuts off during the day. And a message from the CEO that more changes are expected to happen faster in the future. Here's a direct quote from upper management: "Your benefits and compensation package that is offered when you are hired is not a promise." So there you have it- join Gusto if you tend to accept career opportunities on the assumption that your benefits and compensation will decrease the longer work for the company. I think the biggest issue with Gusto is not the decisions that have been made, but rather how they were implemented and so poorly defended by those who control the fate of our careers. If you truly stand for transparency, then give us some data points to defend how these changes are necessary for the company's future or at least give a warning that specific benefits are being examined and are subject to change. Moreover, Gusto's current state is hard to reconcile considering the hiring process was predicated on a mission to join a team that's dedicated to equity, transparency, and inclusion. Antithetically, Gusto 2.0 feels more like a dedication to abandoning the values that brought the company this far in a final ploy to go public. I sincerely wish I spent the 9 months or so of my life working for a company that at least had the integrity to show its true colors during the recruiting process.
