Uptake reviews

3.0

43% would recommend to a friend

(262 total reviews)

Adam McElhinney

56% approve of CEO

36% positive business outlook

Uptake has an employee rating of 3.0 out of 5 stars, based on 262 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Uptake employee rating is 22% below average for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

262 reviews
2.0
Dec 20, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great Perks: food coupons daily, beer on tap, frequent free lunch, free goodies and lot of parties and get together. Unlimited Leaves. Good People: People are very friendly and helpful. But a lot of smart people have already left the company. Good Learning Opportunity: The technology stack that we work on is awesome. Our resume looks awesome with just 1-2 years of experience at Uptake.

Cons

Where shall I start? No Core Working Product: Uptake is almost 3 years old but still has no stable, working product. We advertise ourselves as a SAAS company which provides a platform for predictive analysis but all we have is a web app which does not predict much. Hopefully, it will get better over time. No People With Experience: Uptake is a company with a lot of young people. They are all smart but lack experience. Software Engineers become managers in a span of 1 year. There is no proper Architect who oversees things in a project. There are a lot of smart people but not wise people. This led us to fail fast but the problem is we have failed at things so many times that we still do not have a stable product. This too will hopefully get better over time. Not able to hold on to Clients/ customers: Because of the sub-par product the customers are unhappy and eventually stop using Uptakes product. In this three years, many customers left and there is still no returning customers. A lot of bad Contractors: Uptake has hired a lot of incompetent Contractors who do not care about the product. They write bad code which leads to a lot of bugs. All they care about is showing how many stories they have finished so that they get a chance to convert to full time.

avatar
Uptake Response
8y
Thanks for your feedback on both the pros and cons of working at Uptake. We take this input seriously. There are a few things in your cons that we'd like to add clarity around: - At nearly 3.5 years old, we have not one - but several - working products that our customers, which number in the dozens, are using to increase their productivity and reduce asset downtime. - Our very first customer remains a customer of ours, a point of pride we hold dearly. And in the last year alone, we've signed a number of new deals, including those with Berkshire Hathaway Energy and Panduit, two that are well-documented, among others. - While we do employ many very talented young people, we also have some deeply experienced members of our team from an impressive list of companies both large and small. We take great pride in the diversity of experiences our employees bring to our team. It's with seasoned experience and curious minds we create products that serve our industries well. - We strategically bring on highly skilled and qualified contractors as needed who are held to the same standards our full time employees are. Regardless of position, we do expect everyone to operate with excellence. Anything less is addressed. We hope if ever there are questions or you feel there's lack of clarity around our products, customer base, or staff, you will raise those as appropriate with your manager or with our leadership team. We are always happy to talk through where we've been, where we're headed and what we've accomplished, all of which we work hard to make known across our business. Hopefully you take advantage of the resources we offer - like In the Know, All Hands meetings, leadership office hours and more - to stay informed on progress, goals and so forth. For product specifically, we now do product demos at every All Hands and have dedicated product/tech All Hands meetings to encourage people to learn about what’s happening outside their teams and across the company. We always welcome questions and dialogue.
1.0
Sep 6, 2019

The company is on a downward spiral- stay away.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people I met and worked with at Uptake were incredibly smart, kind, and impressive. I learned a tremendous amount.

Cons

Working at Uptake was an amazing opportunity and experience for me professionally and personally. However, Uptake is no longer the company I once worked at- it has been miserably mismanaged and the top quality people who made the place so great have almost all exited. Engineering has been particularly neglected and this means they simply do not have the talent to build the products they have promised. I think people know this deep down but a type of magical thinking has taken hold. People are desperate to believe that deadlines will be met and products will be delivered when there is no clear way this is possible. Instead of making swift, systematic changes to solve problems, people are pretending problems do not exist. I feel very sorry for people who have joined in the past six months, thinking they were getting the old Uptake, but are now stuck with a massively dysfunctional organization. One of the biggest liabilities is the CEO. Keywell comes across as incredibly narcissistic and out of touch with the functioning of the company and the needs of either customers or staff. Everyone at the company has at least one story of him blowing up, doing something laughably out of touch, or refusing to be candid about company business. Once, we got frequent updates about burn rate, runway, and other financial details - not since mid 2018 has any of this been routinely revealed to staff.

1.0
Jan 21, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Entrepreneurial environment with a big idea

Cons

The product does not work - Caterpiller is unhappy - they are not using the software. Uptake is selling vaporware.

avatar
Uptake Response
8y
Thank you for taking the time to write this review. We respect your point of view but don’t believe it accurately represents Uptake or the efforts we've made to develop a clear product strategy and vision for our Lines of Business.
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