Paddle Reviews

3.1

48% would recommend to a friend

(151 total reviews)
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Jimmy Fitzgerald

82% approve of CEO

38% positive business outlook

Paddle has an employee rating of 3.1 out of 5 stars, based on 151 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Paddle employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

151 reviews
2.0
24 Jun 2022

Growing pains

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The team is amazing, people are extremely intelligent and fun to be around. Unlimited holidays actually work without anyone thinking less of you because you decided to take a week or a month off. Being digital first is a major plus. The team is flexible and you can collaborate with people from all over the world.

Cons

Ever since the last funding round and Profitwell acquisition, the company is losing its culture. Decisions are made top-down without communication to the wider team. No space for genuine feedback to those announcements or changes either since most of the "higher-ups" don't even know who the team is and haven't booked time in (it's impossible to find time with them too). Diversity has gone out the window, we've lost a lot of women in the past few months and nobody seems to care. "We're working on it" is what we always hear but no tangible examples have been put forward. Everyone is focused on just delivering things instead of taking care of the team and culture or making sure both teams (profitwell and paddle) find common ground. American culture is notably different and there's no plan on how to handle that. If the company is aware and doing something about it, it is not communicated to anyone other than the ones talking about it. Teams are losing their ability to strategise (even though it's an essential aspect for some roles) because "higher-ups" weren't trained as managers, don't know how to communicate, and are accumulating decisions that maybe they shouldn't. Some Profitwell employees came to Paddle with a much higher seniority than they should when comparing to the Paddle standard, simply because Profitwell was already calling them senior/specialist/etc. There needs to be clarity around what to expect from everyone. And that's not mentioning the salary differences, that's a whole other issue. All of this is feedback was given to managers time and time again in the past 2-3 months from different people in different departments and they're happy staying where they are simply because "the economy is bad" and there are no additional resources to focus on these things AND on delivering what was promised. Seems to me like the current management doesn't know what to do when a company is in a tough spot, but the individual contributors are the ones that suffer from it.

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Paddle Response
3y
Thanks for taking the time to share your experience. We’d love to work with you to address some of these points and improve things for you and all other Paddlers. If you feel comfortable, please reach out to your People Partner or to Hanna Smith, our People Director. Christian and the rest of our leadership team have started to share more updates in our regular company-wide All Hands, we hope this has provided more clarity. We still have more work to do and we’re committed to ensuring Paddle is a great place to work for all 360+ global employees.
1.0
17 Dec 2021

Toxic Boys' Club

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- unlimited holiday - sensible approach to pandemic

Cons

There's a top layer of management that floats on top of the engineering department and poisons the culture. It's uniformly made up of cishet white men who bully and manipulate those below them. You will absolutely be blamed for their mistakes, and convinced that you're not good enough. You will be manipulated to work too many hours, being told that you're not delivering or living up to expectations. If you're not part of the in-group, you will never see a promotion or recognition for your achievements. You will receive encouragement to put in extra efforts to contribute to work culture event such as hackathons, but don't expect to ever see recognition or reward for such things. Any effort on your part to call out problems or to improve the culture will result in you being accused of being the cause of the problem. Management frequently make dumb decisions and blame those under them when it doesn't pan out. The codebase's quality reflects the dysfunctional team culture. If you're not a cishet white dudebro, you probably aren't going to have a great time in the engineering department.

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Paddle Response
4y
Thanks for taking the time review. The language you use to describe the engineering culture, is not one that we associate with Paddle. We’re an embracing, inclusive group of talented individuals that always strive for better. Whilst we do acknowledge we're not perfect, we are absolutely committed in growing and providing an inclusive environment where everyone feels like they have a voice and can most importantly grow and contribute. I'm sorry your experience didn't match our intentions. Nonetheless, thank you for being part of our journey.
2.0
30 Jan 2025

Leadership changes, ethical decline

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Benefits look great on paper -Some talented, hardworking colleagues (if they stick around) building great products. -Remote first

Cons

-High turnover: it felt at least 3/4 people a month were leaving at one point. Whole (critical) teams leaving, after some leadership changes (internally dubbed as the Exodus). -Shady performance reviews -Hiring practices were questionable at best, with strategy shifting based on leadership whims. -Layoffs and redundancies meant skeleton teams expected to deliver the same results with fewer resources. -Unlimited leave means nothing if you’re too overworked to take it.

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Glassdoor has 157 Paddle reviews submitted anonymously by Paddle employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Paddle is right for you.