Prosper.com reviews

A year into new technology management and nothing has changed – except our loss of some exceptional engineers and frustration across the entire team. Our systems have not appreciably gotten better, our processes are relatively unchanged, and we still lack anything that resembles a roadmap – moving from project to the next without a game plan. In exchange we have gotten management that belittles their engineering staff, their code and skills, without actually possessing those skills themselves. Finger pointing and blaming game played daily, management never seems to take the blame for mistakes. Actual shouting matches have occurred. Sexist and racist remarks appear to be encouraged via their email chains and in meetings. HR is not competent to deal with the situation (friend of management). Their attempts to re architect into a totally different language have been a disaster, they make no effort to understand the system before proclaiming to a team of senior and seasoned engineers “this is how you’re going to do it”. Their Wikipedia like knowledge of everything is very helpful when telling engineers how to do their jobs – it’s a comfort knowing management will tell me how to do my job – a load off my mind, and thankfully, “it’s easy”. Someone read an article about all the mistakes new managers make, and they misread the title as “good practices for a new manager”. Executive management attempts to project they want to facilitate growth of the team, while at the same time technology management is actively looking externally to replace all their leaders. At least they have seemed to have exhausted their network of bros that they can slot into leadership roles. Hiring unqualified friends is really not working out for executive management. This is a hostile working environment for anyone in technology who isn’t a friend. If you do brave it, expect a chaotic environment, leaders who can’t lead, burn out and equity that amounts to a small bonus (over 4 years of course). Additionally, consider calling one of our ex-top engineers to learn about the systems, they are still more helpful than management. Good Luck Brave Soldier!

It's hard to know where to begin: * The industry is absolutely brutal. It is extremely competitive and there is very little product differentiation. If the industry as a whole is doing well, a medium-sized player like Prosper will struggle for market share. If the industry or the market is not doing well (and we know those times will come), you can forget about it. There is massive downside risk with little upside - a totally unenviable market position and one that every new hire should accept coming in. * A serious lack of quality people managers. Many folks spend their days forwarding emails and holding meetings about meetings with very little actual work product to show for their efforts. * For a long time, a serious lack of HR leadership. This has, however, improved over the last year or so as new members have been brought to the team. * Lack of transparency around pay, promotion, and PTO. At the beginning of 2016, folks were told that pay adjustments were meager because 2016 was going to be a tough year (and it was). Then, at the beginning of 2017, pay adjustments were meager again...because 2016 was a tough year. * Some employees are allowed to take seemingly endless amounts of PTO without recourse. There is a complete lack of consistency around the enforcement of PTO policies. * In a company with a significant middle management layer, it becomes very hard to understand who contributed to what. This leaves employees with the option to either shamelessly and relentlessly promote themselves, or be looked over for promotions. * The CEO is a genuinely nice guy, but has been pushing his "nice guy" shtick a little bit too hard of late. When the business begins to turn, this routine will tire very, very quickly. * Consistent lack of success outside of personal loans. An attempt at a point-of-sale product and a foray into a personal finance app were both failures of epic proportions. Leadership has attempted to cast HELOC as a different sort of product (since "we built it from scratch") but that is also off to a rough start in every sense. * Understaffing across several teams and over long periods of time has led to some significant errors, and presents a significant risk exposure moving forward. See, for example, the recent $3mm settlement with the SEC for an error calculating investor returns. * Job titling is a mess. For example: "managers" who don't manage anyone or anything; "Head of XYZ" to describe roughly half of the staff on some teams. Settle on a nomenclature and stick to it. * Some teams are in a constant state of disarray and this prevents many initiatives from launching on time or at all. “We don’t have the engineering resources” might as well be Prosper’s slogan.