Pros
The level of talent at Uptake is great. There are smart people with incredible track records everywhere you look in the company. Even though many really talented people have left in the last year, there are still great people around. The new leadership team is committed to change. Executives brought in during the last year, from GE and elsewhere, are focused on improving the culture. While the new executives can be polarizing, they’re genuinely trying to take steps to move the company in the right direction. As others have pointed out, benefits like free snacks, a lunch subsidy, and unlimited time off are also nice. These benefits are almost always found at tech companies nowadays, though.
Cons
Culture is not very collaborative and morale is low. Teams operate in their own silos and a significant amount of time is spent playing politics rather than building. Waves of recent layoffs and poor transparency around those layoffs have led to poor morale and people fear for their jobs. The new team is trying to improve this, but they have a ways to go - this is deeply embedded at Uptake. Constantly changing, unnecessarily complex strategy has put Uptake significantly behind the competition. Although the product roadmap has been clarified, we’ve been constantly asked to create new product features and change we’re building based on new strategies (that always end up changing). This has also led to sales teams having difficulty finding and singing on many new customers, while we see competitors sign big names. There’s no rhyme or reason to promotions or explanation of how to build a career at Uptake. Teams often excuse this away by saying Uptake is a start-up. Unfortunately, with more than 500 people, there’s no excuse for not being able to explain what it takes to get promoted.
