I'm glad I worked here...so I know what I don't want. - Anonymous employee WayUp Employee Review

Departmental Issues: - The distribution of work is very uneven here. Some people are desperate for work while others are so overworked they get burnt out very, very quickly and will likely not last a year. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the entire company is incredibly siloed into their own specific niches, so no one can really help you with your job. This also creates an incredible amount of job security for each person, so while that can be a pro, it also adds a lot of pressure. - Having this siloed structure also easily allows for other departments to point fingers at one another and having “scapegoats” was very common, especially between product and marketing. This prevents anyone from taking responsibility and creates additional tension between teams. - As people are so siloed, each person and department are looking out for their own OKRs (which commonly are conflicting of each other), so there is little to no prioritization and if you are not friends with the PM or say “well the CEO wants this done”, your project, even if it’s important, will not even get looked at. - WayUp has struggled for a long time to find a differentiator between themselves and the competition, which means that so much of their traffic is driven by email. If your entire business is dependent on whether people open or click on emails, then you do not have a business, you have an email list. - There were three major strategy shifts during my short tenure at WayUp and numerous other “smaller” shifts throughout that time. Much of this was driven by not meeting the original goal, so the goal was shifted to one that was already being met. Here’s a tip for the Board: if you set a metric in the beginning of the quarter and they either do not report on it or they combine that metric with many others, that means that department did not hit that original metric and they are distracting you from that failure and hoping you’ll forget. Managerial Issues: - As mentioned in the Pros, your experience here entirely depends on your manager, which sure, can be true at a lot of companies, but especially at WayUp the difference between a great manager and a terrible manager is huge. There are a few very good, mentor-type managers, but those are few and far between. The majority of managers at WayUp are simply delegators and a select couple are straight up toxic, gossip about their employees, and will leave you with a lot of baggage, anxiety, and depression. - When issues are raised with management, there is very little progress or acknowledgement of actions that can be taken. Many times that I raised concerns, I was told that “that is just how they are” or that “they are looking into it”, but received no follow up. - There are absolutely no experts here. It is essentially the blind leading the blind, which can be exciting for an entry-level employee where you get to learn a lot from Google, blogs, etc., but don’t expect to learn much from others here. This also leads to the issue that when there are actually tough problems, the loudest voice in the room is listened to, whether they are right or not. - Many people at WayUp love to prove how smart they are and they will often play “gotcha” games with new people to test their knowledge which leads to frustration, anxiety, and an incredible amount of imposter syndrome for new employees. This “gotcha” game will also be played with older employees to “catch them” in something instead of just confronting them like adults. - The CEO does not seem to trust who she hires to take workload from her and she is still very, very involved in nearly every aspect of the business, even though she hired an entire exec team to get in the weeds (which should be noted that out of the six hired, only three remain). It is not uncommon for her to join in on decisions at the last minute and then “suggest” that changes be made at the 11th hour. Cultural Issues: - Learning and development is not a priority here. There is only $60 learning credit per quarter and there is absolutely no incentive to participate. Another reason why people do not use the credit is because unless there are special circumstances, the additional learning has to be outside of work hours, which is insane, especially considering many people at WayUp work 50 - 60 hours a week. - Proper product training is also not a priority here, especially for the sales team. Since sales does not get a full product training, they do not understand the limitations of the platform and the limitations of the WayUp user population. Many times expectations were set for clients that literally could not be met. This type of situation puts marketing in a terrible spot because there would need to be a lot of promotion (sometimes straight up excessive and spamming our users) in an attempt to get applicants. - WayUp has tried to make strides to improve the culture, but there is only so much “company sponsored happy hours”, “morning yoga”, and “team lunches” can do when there are so many other issues that are rotting WayUp from the inside out. There has never been an issue of others bonding with each other, the issues are so much deeper and start with the top. - As said above, WayUp has made efforts to improve the culture, but very little has been done to improve the diversity of the office. I’m not just talking about racial diversity, but also diversity of thought. Easily 90% of the office was from the Northeast and white and probably 60 - 65% were just starting at WayUp as their first job out of college. When concerns have been raised about diversity, there were arbitrary goals to introduce more diverse candidates into the hiring pool, which is great, but if you don’t actually hire any diverse candidates, what does that matter? Clearly there are still some biases at play and for a company that prides itself on its “diverse population of students” and encourages companies to embrace diversity, WayUp has a ways to go to actually practice what they preach. HR Issues: - Be warned that there are a lot of “mutual departures” here (read: firing) with no plan to replace the people who are lost, so those that are already overworked will get even more overworked. Also note that the amount of employees working at WayUp has actually gone down, so when you read about how they are “growing incredibly fast”, that is not true. By the time I hit a year, there were only 15 people left out of the 65 I started with. - While there is “unlimited” sick time, people are so overworked that no one takes it because then they would be even more behind than they already are because 1) WayUp is so siloed that the only person that can do their job is themselves and 2) WayUp is very understaffed so many people are doing what used to be 2 - 3 full time jobs. - For being a small startup, there is a ton of hierarchy and arbitrary senior level titles thrown around that do not mean anything. There are a couple of departments that would be three or four levels deep in management - essentially 1:1 management all the way down. - Throughout my time at WayUp, I noticed that interns and contractors treated very differently from full time employees. They were not allowed at team meeting, not allowed to attend full day or half day events, etc. Can you imagine working at a start-up and not being able to attend any of the fun, bonding events to destress? Neither can I. - This relates to the managerial issue, but the HR policies also entirely differ based on manager, which creates tension and jealousy between teams. For example, Work From Home (WFH) policy was different in every department with engineering getting the go ahead to WFH whenever they wanted to other departments where it was “frowned upon” to WFH. General Comments: - Talk to any WayUp alumni and nearly everyone will describe the sigh of relief they had when they left. Unfortunately WayUp leaves a bad taste in nearly everyone’s mouth and it is often joked about among alumni after people leave. - Just look at the types of reviews that are posted - 1 star then a couple of 5 stars. Sure, there is going to be some polarizing reviews, but for there to be either all one star or all five stars? Seems sketch. Also, I can personally vouch that there have been at least five Glassdoor reviews removed from this page.