Handshake reviews

3.1

43% would recommend to a friend

(291 total reviews)

Garrett Lord

44% approve of CEO

37% positive business outlook

Handshake has an employee rating of 3.1 out of 5 stars, based on 291 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Handshake employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Education industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

291 reviews
1.0
Jan 4, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people you work with as peers are some of the most amazing, kind, hard working people you will meet. Compensation also isn't bad, especially when a leader likes you and hires you into a level you don't actually qualify for just to get you into a higher pay band.

Cons

The C-suite and Senior Leadership are terrible (except for Christine and Marta). Garrett and senior leaders initially placed all the blame for the company struggling these last couples years on on-the-ground workers and mid-level managers (as you'll see in reviews here, there have been many re-orgs, rounds of firings, layoffs and 'role eliminations') and realized too late that it was actually the leaders above those orgs that should have been the ones to take accountability and blame. Now that the pressure is on for senior leaders and above now that their performance is finally under scrutiny, all any of them cares about is surviving for themselves because they know they can no longer pass the buck to the lower level managers and their staff. This is creating even more chaos, toxic territorialism, lack of collaboration and low morale. There is a huge lack of direction, mission-alignment and priorities. This is reflective of the poor leadership and management HS is facing. After being shaken up and re-orged so many times, no one knows what the most important things are anymore, what anyone owns, who is accountable for what, and why we're doing what we're doing. This is further exacerbated by their glaringly ineffective and often conflicting communication to the rest of the company where they constantly dance around topics (re-org comms, layoff/firing rationales, change in healthcare benefits, return to office, etc). There is also a lack of clear career progression and opportunities. In order to move up in the company, especially to senior and staff positions, it often feels like a popularity contest and once you've made it, you can effectively coast and get away with being a poor collaborator, communicator and contributor. It feels like you have to jump through so many impossible hoops just to make it to a senior level where actual seniors around you are doing way less than you are but still are making more money than you WITH the title. If you try to figure out why you aren't hitting the mark for promotion, you'll often get the run around and the goal posts are moved time and time again, leading to frustration and burnout. And most egregiously, we don't live and reflect our own mission of democratizing opportunity. Our culture has slowly been degrading toward identifying with other more toxic big tech companies, instead of jumping on the opportunity of standing out as a company that not only is working outwardly towards its mission of democratizing opportunity, but also living it. What few (if any) DEI initiatives we have fall directly and only on those that are from underrepresented communities (the tax is real) and this work is not rewarded. Our hiring of early talent/juniors is nonexistent. Yes, we have an intern program but for full time work we've shifted, at least in engineering, to the mindset of "senior is better" so we only hire seniors when we could be opening up opportunities to early talent. There are rumors of return to office cropping up, which can be great for camaraderie and butts in seats micromanagement, but can possibly be less accessible to those who can't afford to live in expensive areas, who benefit from WFH due to childcare or a caretaker, that have a disability and so on. There are many other ways where our internal culture is conflicting with what we try to portray outwardly, so if you do come join Handshake you can experience the hypocrisy for yourself.

1.0
Dec 19, 2023

Engineering is a career dead-end

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Full commitment to remote work, pay is competitive

Cons

The reviews don't lie, there has been a massive negative shift in the company's culture throughout 2023, starting with the performance based layoffs at the beginning of the year. Internal company surveys also reflect the sentiment; employee confidence and pride in the company has tanked. No action has been taken by leadership to change this. The engineering organization has been in disarray ever since the surprise Fall 2022 re-org, and re-orgs are now regularly happening every six months. Like your team or what you're working on? Don't get too attached, soon enough you'll be on a new team in a new product area that nobody is familiar with with no training. Teams are disbanded with no thought put into the maintaining the domain knowledge of the team members, and documentation is nonexistent. Collaboration is starting to break down, no doubt due to the company's "performance culture" and focus on individual impact above all else. Tribalism is becoming common, where other teams will try to put a stop to any work that crosses into their domain, regardless of project priorities. Worst of all are the performance reviews. First of all it takes months to even receive your reviews, by the time you do you're already a third of the way into the next cycle. Then there are the reviews themselves, and despite the supposed culture, performance is not rewarded. The most minor of missteps will be used against you to knock down your review score - even if they were due to factors outside of your control. It's also a common theme that negative feedback is not regularly shared by managers, so negative reviews come as a complete surprise.

avatar
Handshake Response
2y
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. We recognize that there have been substantial changes across the organization – and R&D in particular – over the past year or so. As of December 2023, we have new leadership in place over both Product and Engineering, and we are confident in these leaders and their vision for the organization. We anticipate that with these individuals at the helm, many of your concerns will be addressed. We welcome feedback about internal processes, including our performance review system, and we run a retro after each cycle to assess how we can improve the process – we’ll bring your feedback into that conversation as we want the performance review process to be impactful and timely.
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