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      Propel

      Engaged employer

      Propel Reviews

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      4.1

      84% would recommend to a friend

      (19 total reviews)

      Jimmy Chen

      83% approve of CEO

      71% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      4.2

      Culture and values

      4.1

      Diversity and inclusion

      4.1

      Work/Life balance

      4.0

      Compensation and benefits

      3.9

      Senior management

      3.6

      Career opportunities

      Propel has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 19 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Propel 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

      19 reviews
      1.0
      18 Aug 2023

      Avoid, avoid, avoid

      Designer
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Amazing, driven people who share your same values. Immense potential for tangible impact on other's lives within the product. One of the most diverse places I've ever worked (but lay-offs disproportionately affected women and POC).

      Cons

      Leadership has a very skewed understanding of how product is made, and 0% understanding of the contributions of design. Design, UXR, Content were overextended across many teams, and instead of addressing root causes and properly staffing teams, Jimmy decided to lay off the entire design org, citing "inefficiency" and hard economic times. He sees UXR and design as a service and something that any PM can do. Immense bias in leadership, where incompetency is rewarded if you're a white male. One month after lay-offs, the company then turned around and posted an opening for one of the same roles that was eliminated. This was incredibly egregious given many talented employees had given their heart and soul to a demanding, mission-driven startup for years, with absolutely no prior performance issues. Business and product strategy is also going south, as 6 million DAU are becoming less engaged, and the company laid off the people who understood their needs the most. Propel is moving towards unethically profiteering off of the most vulnerable, rather than providing ethical technology for low-income Americans.

      avatar
      Propel Response
      2y
      We appreciate your passion for our users and taking the time to share your experience. Propel went through a layoff in June to better align our staffing and skill sets with the needs of the business going forward. We recognize this was a painful and jarring experience - particularly for those impacted. We’ve done our best to support impacted employees with a generous severance package of at least 10 weeks, COBRA reimbursement for up to six months, and two months of job search assistance. Serving low income Americans is why we exist. In July alone, Propel put over $1.9 million dollars back into our users pockets. Building a profitable and sustainable business is hard, but core to our ability to continue to serve our users and expand the services we’re able to offer them. Ensuring we’re able to continue to deliver on our mission sometimes requires making difficult business decisions. We recognize these moments can be painful and disruptive and will continue to do our best to support our team as a whole
      2.0
      21 Jun 2023

      Typical start up with ideology over practices and processes

      Customer experience associate
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Fintech experience gives you great insight into banking and skills that are not otherwise available to CX workers, so that was great (debit card compliance, insight and training on debit rails and various banking mechanisms, etc). Company swag was really quality stuff and made remote work comfortable.

      Cons

      The idea behind the main product that was being developed while I was there was compelling at first but unfortunately, the company valued its ideas of what they thought it should be over the critical feedback we received from customers in its beta run. The customer research team had questionable methodology that included leading questions and a lack of economic insight and when CX associates pointed this out (as the team who received the most critical feedback directly from customers), we were continuously dismissed. While other teams seem to have great benefits and culture, CX was treated very differently and often unable to participate in things like the lunch and learns, etc. In a painful irony, the product was for lower income folks in the US which the company had defined at the income level they paid CX staff.

      1.0
      11 Jul 2024

      Infested with politics

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Good compensation, flexible work hours, good engineers.

      Cons

      Unfortunately, the company increasingly became political. If you're not good at politics, expect to eventually become marginalized no matter how much you've achieved at this company. There's passive discrimination against those who don't show extroverted kind of excitement to the company political/cultural ideology.

      avatar
      Propel Response
      1y
      I'm sorry to hear that was your experience. Building a sustainable business in this space requires making a lot of difficult prioritization and resourcing decisions. When making them, we aren't factoring in the personality of the teams involved, we're solely focusing on what we think is best for the organization given the imperfect information we have at the moment. We recognize people at Propel truly care deeply about serving our users and give all that they can to deliver a great product and experience to low income Americans - it's our team's super power - but recognize that it also makes some of these changes even more painful.
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      Glassdoor has 19 Propel reviews submitted anonymously by Propel employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Propel is right for you.