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
Jan 20, 2017

A rapid and steady decline

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Good compensation - As of 2017, good healthcare and dental benefits - Generous 401k match (4%) - Excellent work/life balance with generous PTO policy - Most people are very friendly and are really smart and passionate about their work and subject areas

Cons

As others have noted, under its current leadership structure, morale and product innovation have plummeted. The engineering culture in particular has faced a precipitous decline. Teams silo themselves in their respective Slack channels and very rarely, if ever, is there any cross-team communication or awareness on what other teams are working on and what the organization's collective goals should be. All hands meetings are spectacles, complete with a clueless CTO who sputters and stammers through haphazardly thrown together presentations on company direction and goals, often leaving the rest of the team dumbfounded. Suggestions have been made for ways to combat this decline in morale, only to be told "Yes, we're working on it", with no visible results or "We don't have the resources" from managers that seem completely indifferent to these concerns in the first place. Several bad apples are allowed to rot the rest of the bunch, with brazen bullying and intimidation over the public and private Slack channels and through confrontations in team meetings. When people have complained about these issues to HR, the response is a collective shrug and "What do you want us to do about it?" Like most startups and mid-size companies, finding a trajectory for career growth is a challenge and opportunities can be limited just because of the size of the team, but management is especially opaque in what the levels are (they say "they're coming") and expect everybody to somehow just pick a ladder. **A company of this size does not even have an org chart!!** In addition, the company intends to increase the headcount of the number of software engineers without hiring in the proper support areas such as ops, that enable these engineers to do their job. Because of the lack of support resources, critical infrastructure goes unmaintained and properly deploying something can take forever. Not to mention there's a horrendous lack of documentation on anything and knowledge sharing outside of one's own team almost never happens.

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.

1.0
Jan 15, 2017

Growing company needs competent leadership

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Mostly good people. The majority of the employees are smart and good people, and many are genuinely friendly and helpful. - Inspirational. Paperless can be an inspirational place to work due to the talent of some of its designers and developers, and there are a lot of fun and challenging projects to get excited about. - Events and talks. They have regular happy hours and events, and although few are well-attended, they have good intentions and build camaraderie. They often host engineering and design-related talks which are often very interesting. - Good benefits. They offer good benefits and seek the best health and leave plans for their employees.

Cons

- Poor morale, hostile work environment. Often with growing startups, a few bad seeds can breed hostility in an otherwise happy and productive work environment. However, despite numerous complaints, management has continually disregarded concerns about team members' attitudes and behaviors affecting morale and productivity. Engineering management in particular plays favorites and disregards complaints when they consider the complainee to be more technically valuable than the complainer. - Exclusive, narrow-minded, confused leadership. Product leadership is exclusive and guarded (a lot of a "don't worry about it we got it" attitude) but with no clear evidence, vision, or direction, and engineering management puts a great deal of pressure on engineers to conform to their ideals. Despite a lot of show about "brainstorming", there is little room for disagreement or differing perspectives on how to tackle problems in either sphere. They also refuse to share details about how to gain titles and promotions but simultaneously pressure everyone to be on a promotional track. - High turnover, few female engineers. These statistics are not uncommon for a growing startup, but it's worth noting that in addition to there being so few of them, female engineers have been very rarely promoted in the history of the company, and in some cases are passed up for vague reasons. In general, there have been enough sudden departures and dismissals to give many engineers ongoing anxiety about losing their jobs.

Viewing 10 - 12 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.