The biggest downfall of user ops is bad management who treats associates more like sweatshop workers than people, and is unreceptive to criticism. Work is very repetitive, and if you do better and more work than the average worker, you will be told to do even more of the same work. There's zero acknowledgment of top performers, and people they do acknowledge in meetings are picked based on a popularity contest instead of actual merit or metrics. Several top performers within this department have been given more work to do, and threatened to be fired if they did not do more than the requirements for anyone else. If you take on multiple projects, roles, and teams, your pay is the same as an associate that just onboarded. Whenever there's a backlog, management simply tells everyone to do an extra half an hour of work with no compensation or reward. The personalities of people here tend to be more introverted, so people prefer to conform and be silent rather than dispute obvious oppression from upper management.
There's rampant favoritism, and the main way to advance is to brown nose your way in to a higher role. There's a specific instance of this that occurred despite mass disapproval of the floor. Shady things occurred, such as when there was excess budget, teams were given a chance to have a free meal. However, one team had their treat reduced to just a drink and the rest of the money disappeared.
Even though you'll be welcomed by many friendly faces, after the fanfare ends, everyone mostly keeps to themselves and no one likes communicating outside of short pings, if even that. Almost all associates are introverted, which makes forced social gatherings a little more awkward and stiff. Everyone likes to express their discontentment privately instead of sharing it in one voice, which could make a difference as opposed to the one or two associates willing to rise against unfair actions from management.
I've been in several startups and tech companies smaller and bigger than here, and can say that this is the most toxic environment I've ever experienced. Low morale is rampant and consistently expressed in whispers. Managers contribute a lot to this due to their demands and two-faced attitudes. They'll say "We care for your mental health and well-being" but the next day, say "We have a problem because you didn't work enough for this one hour of the day". Yes, management keeps track of every action associates do every hour of the day, when it's clearly advertised upon the start of the job that it's a weekly quota that can more or less fluctuate each day. Guess they had to make up something to do to keep the job, but I don't think creating this inherent distrust between management and associates is a great way to foster happy and loyal employees. The micromanagement is severe here, which is unconducive to productivity.
If you're driven and intelligent, this is not your job. You will thrive if you just want to keep your head down and have a mediocre-paying job where you don't have to think about anything really. If you really love Yelp and want to go somewhere with it, this is not your job. Preference is given to external candidates for management positions, and middle-tier positions don't pay much more. If you want to improve the Yelp community, this is not your job. They hired aggressively politically correct people to "improve" the rules and most people on the floor were never Yelpers or foodies to begin with.
They're basically outsourcing this role now though, so my current advisal would be for SF associates to quit before the impending mass layoff!
