Pros
The team at Handshake is incredible. If it weren’t for the people I got to meet, this review would likely be one star. The company has such wonderful people, and it’s a real shame that so many of them are exceedingly overworked, under-appreciated, and exploited. Recruiting ironically isn’t prioritized at all at Handshake (it seems the CEO would like to replace that poor department with AI), but clearly they’re doing something right. The people I got to work with at Handshake were undeniably the best part of my time there.
Cons
The company has been on a downward spiral for quite some time. Handshake preaches about attracting and retaining top talent, but they can’t seem to take basic steps to achieve this themselves. For starters, employee engagement is at an all time low and leadership hasn’t done a thing about it. No one trusts the C-Suite, especially the money- and power-hungry CEO. He has a well-established reputation within the company for being an egotistical tech bro who has never had a boss. He spoke poorly of others (even making a meme to insult his own employees on Twitter), interrupted people constantly during All Hands meetings, and overall lacks empathy and emotional intelligence. It’s incredibly ironic that he posted about tech layoffs on LinkedIn after cutting his own staff without batting an eye. When I left Handshake, multiple people asked hesitantly ‘on your own accord, right..?’ because we’d become so accustomed to people disappearing left and right with no explanation. Leadership has also touted a new ‘performance culture,’ which they quoted in their first round of layoffs. They then discouraged people from calling the cuts ‘layoffs’ - they assured us that these were performance-related eliminations, despite the fact that there was no clear messaging to any impacted employees regarding their performance. No PIPs. No opportunity to improve. Just ‘there’s the door,’ followed by more layoffs thereafter. The cuts that followed were allegedly unrelated, but it seems as though Handshake was trying desperately to cut staff as many ways as possible without alarming investors. Especially in the wake of this new ‘performance culture,’ Handshake employees are expected to live and breathe work. This is often disguised as encouraging employees to live and breathe the Handshake mission, which is admittedly a really awesome one! The mission continues to get lost, though, as leadership remains irresponsible and clearly out of touch with employees. Again, the whole thing is painfully ironic. Handshake has all of the information and tools it needs to attract and retain top talent, but it can’t be bothered to take action themselves. Especially since they have such great team on board (for now, at least!), it’s a real shame that Handshake doesn’t prioritize its people.
