I was really excited about the mission and culture that everyone talked to me about during my extensive interview process. It seemed like somewhere that was thoughtful and really cared about its employees and customers. Once I started, I realized that what they cared about was how much work they could get out of each employee.
The leadership team talks about the values so much that you can recite them in your sleep. While they all seem great in theory, it becomes clear after awhile that they are almost all focused around making this job your life. Managers would often say "it's a marathon not a sprint" and talks all the time about taking breaks, but still expect each employee to 60-70 hours every week and keep up with emails after hours and on weekends with no break at all.
The thirst that recruiters and hiring managers have for getting Ivy-League talent is unreal. I was in multiple conversations with hiring managers who would reject a candidate because they didn't have the "background they were looking for" or they weren't a "culture fit" which almost always meant that they didn't go to an impressive enough school or have amazing companies on their resume prior to interviewing at Gusto. I'm all for keeping the bar high, but that kind of elitism is really disconcerting especially for a company who's mission is "putting people first".
I think the biggest disappointment came from seeing just how obsessed Gusto is with being seen as "the best place to work" but how little they actually care about making sure employees are happy. They treat it as an honor to even be able to be part of the team and I saw them let a startling amount of employees go in the year that I was there. The leadership's rhetoric around this was that "people should be at a company that is the best fit for them. We really appreciate all they've done for Gusto, but ultimately felt that they would be better suited somewhere else." Behind the scenes, these employees were working insane hours, had very little to no direction from their managers, and were killing themselves to try to keep their jobs. I knew team members that were miserable in their jobs but were terrified to tell their managers that they were unhappy or feeling overwhelmed because they didn't want to be let go.
