Paperless Post reviews

3.4

58% would recommend to a friend

(68 total reviews)

James Hirschfeld

57% approve of CEO

53% positive business outlook

Paperless Post has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 68 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Paperless Post employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

68 reviews
1.0
Mar 1, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Compensation and work life balance.

Cons

I got some great advice from a startup guru when I was first applying to tech startups: Look at how many people have left the company in the last year. If there are a lot of former employees, you know it's a bad sign and there's a problem internally - stay away. This could not be more true than at Paperless Post. LinkedIn doesn't lie, go look at the number of ex-employees, there has been a mass exodus in the last year of great talent getting out of this company for good reason: No strategic leadership at the company: The CEOs, the COO, the CPO all have no prior experience at proper tech companies (again, look this up on LinkedIn). This is a catastrophic weakness for a tech startup at a stage in need of growth. Think back to the last time you remember something innovative coming out of Paperless Post since they first began. Coming up short on examples? That's because there is no innovation coming from this company since their start in 2008. That's right. 2008 and no real innovation on the tech and product side. It is the blind leading the blind at the C level, and when smart individuals at the company try to push for innovation, it gets lost in a sea of fear of risk as there is poor understanding of what proper and healthy business risk looks like. This is due in major part to the team’s weak handle, at a basic level, of what the business drivers should be as the company grows. Top down goals of the company are non existent and no teams, let alone individuals, had clear goals to work toward. It is an utter mess. Culture of cliques: This company thrives on a clique culture where those that have been at the company the longest are allowed to push ideas through, jockey for promotions, and game politics in a way that many would consider unethical. Lack of management skill: This comes top down. Because the C team is green on tech industry depth of knowledge and has never managed teams outside of Paperless Post as this was many of their first ever jobs out of college, there is no rigor around management skill. Management has no reasonable and objective promotion benchmarks and can use the so-called existing framework ambiguity to their advantage on an extremely subjective curve - which in multiple instances I witnessed while there included cases where implicit bias and sexism were factors. I back this up by the fact that on paper, those that were getting overlooked for promotions had great track records at the company of executing and driving results. Those that did get promoted were those that had been there longest and were very close with management and the C team on a personal level. The mass exodus I mentioned is due in large part to promises of promotions with no action for months to YEARS. Yes, years. Plenty of individuals waited years for promised promotions and after getting burned over and over, they left. Conclusion: Stay away. This place is toxic.

5.0
Feb 27, 2017

A lot of work going into scaling the company

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

A lot of well meaning people working hard to build a real product for real people. Most people at the company have good intentions. Good work life balance, except for some members of the leadership team and some support functions. Really positive recent changes on the engineering and product teams, that look like they're going to do a lot of good.

Cons

Just the usual growing pains for Company that grew by 30%+ headcount in the last year. First time founders. However, they've been at it a while. Starting to learn.

2.0
Jan 25, 2017

Growing pains wearing thin

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The non-technical teams are great, and they make a beautiful product you can be proud to work with. There are always at least a few people in each realm of the company who are truly creative and motivated, and happy to share and mentor. You can find a niche in other places if you're assertive and sociable enough.

Cons

The 'culture' has become one of conformity and validation, and 'not fitting in' seems to be a valid reason to let people go, which makes people nervous and much less likely to contribute differing viewpoints. The CTO and other leadership constantly pressure employees to prove their worth to the company, which seems to be their go-to motivational tactic. Forums and meetings occur frequently to discuss forums and meetings, which lead to more confusing and flaky guidelines. More growing pains that have been going on too long. Product managers are mostly project managers, and product leadership shows no concern for the rapidly failing morale around them. One of the product directors can be found regularly disrupting people's work and wasting people's time to talk to them about himself.

Viewing 43 - 45 of 68 Reviews

Glassdoor has 71 Paperless Post reviews submitted anonymously by Paperless Post employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Paperless Post is right for you.