Great Work Enviornment - Freelance Illustrator Kognity Employee Review

- The product; knowing that I get to work with a product that has a positive social impact - The colleagues; great people that are knowledgeable within ed-tech -The salary; good comp & ben package

I can't think of anything in particular that would be a down side

A majority of the people you work with at Kognity have some of the biggest hearts you can imagine. Kind, friendly, genuine, ambitious, and caring; for the most part, everything the company posts in regards to the character of your colleagues is true. The company’s vision is also admirable, and one that you can feel you’re truly contributing to as part of the Kognity team. As far as the benefits package is concerned, it’s top notch, with 6 weeks vacation and the option to purchase 3 additional weeks of vacation, extra time if work is required on weekends, 3 weeks sick time, retirement fund contributions, reimbursements for health and wellness activities, and 100% coverage for medical/dental/vision insurance.

There are a few things you need to think about if you’re considering taking up employment with Kognity: 1. The company is very fast-moving, and things change almost instantly. More often than not, you’ll be overworked and find your fellow colleagues are exhausted. When Kognity tries to investigate any problem, they take their surface-level findings, hodge-podge together some inadequate solutions, and then pride themselves on “moving quickly to find a resolution.” This simply has not and still does not work, and instead only leads them to dig themselves deeper into the hole of the problem they’re attempting to fix. 2. Kognity provides great exposure to education technology as an industry. However, they grossly overwork and underpay their employees. It was not until stepping outside of Kognity to go to another company within the edtech space and find that entry level starting salary is $20,000+ higher per year for the same exact role (yes, even at edtech start-ups). 3. If you’re not based in Stockholm, you are a complete afterthought to the company. As someone previously wrote, Kognity is very Sweden-centric, and makes a lot of impactful company-wide decisions without considering that, at the time, nearly 50% of their employees were not based in Stockholm. 4. Also noted before, many leaders have not had roles outside of Kognity or lack experience in education, and they are typically the most junior in the company. The leaders they choose, in addition to the lack of qualifications, are typically the outliers when referring to the people being kind, friendly, genuine, ambitious, and caring. If you’re trying to gain a leadership role in the company, particularly on the Growth, Customer Experience, and Tech teams, you must either be a favorite, or become “one of the boys.” In terms of leadership, Kognity fails to recognize the inherent differences that come with “leaders” versus “managers”, as seen in their continuous struggle to break into the market. Having an approximately “20% overall market share” of textbooks within one curriculum when the company offers 3+ curricula, with schools often using Kognity books as a resource rather than a complete textbook replacement (which is the company’s aim to replace the printed textbook) is not successfully “cracking the market.” 5. There is a very big and unstated company “yes” culture. This goes so far as people saying yes to something, even when they know they do not have it in them, in fear of not climbing up the career ladder at Kognity, which as a company promises lots of upward career mobility. It’s a lot of smoke and mirrors when trying to find actual answers to problems, and unless the issue you’ve raised is a priority on the leadership’s radar, you get a lot of “yes” when asking questions or for help, but no concrete action comes of it.