Sequoia Reviews

2.8

39% would recommend to a friend

(380 total reviews)
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Greg Golub

37% approve of CEO

34% positive business outlook

Sequoia has an employee rating of 2.8 out of 5 stars, based on 380 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Sequoia employee rating is 25% below average for employers within the Management and consulting industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

380 reviews
2.0
3 Jul 2018

Would I recommend to a friend? Not a chance...

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Decent offices in San Mateo and San Francisco Sequoia has done a good job of hiring a lot of nice, hard working people Snacks Trying to be more progressive in an industry lacking innovation

Cons

The company is a complete dictatorship. Please do your homework on the CEO's reputation in the industry before you consider taking a job here. Ask yourself if you'll be happy working in an environment with someone who literally has to control every decision in the company (from the napkin color at events to the emails that can be sent to prospects). Do you believe that's an effective leadership structure for a 250 person company? Middle management exists only to carry out his orders and nothing else. Look at the past list of C level execs who have joined Sequoia only to leave within 24 months because of this environment. You will not be immune to it just because you aren't in the management ranks. There is no room for dissent at Sequoia - it is absolutely true that you can't have an opinion that differs from the CEO. If you do it's likely your time will be limited. All employee departures are swept under the rug. Smart, hard working colleagues are often just gone with no explanation of what happened. Never a thank you for their contributions or well wishes for the future. Lately there have been more voluntary departures of really good people who have just had their fill of the dictatorial style of the CEO. This spiteful treatment of departures is part of the overall culture unfortunately. Useless busywork. Outside of all the work you already have on your plate, you'll be forced into cross functional collaboration projects where you have to devise a way to make the business better and devote time to your project and team each week. At the end of 3 months you'll have to present your deliverable and try to roll it out to an employee base that will never wind up using what you worked on. Here's my solution to this - hire an operations team to improve the operations of the company instead of making your client facing roles take on more work. Sequoia has no HR team but has about 8 recruiters and recruiting coordinators. I still don't know what the recruiting coordinators do all day. This is a huge potential liability for when actual HR related matters come up. As others have mentioned, the culture and values are largely fake. Sequoia is a pure volume play on the employee benefits sector, yet one of their stated values is quality over scope. The support teams are overworked and burnt out even though growth goals aren't being hit. I know for a fact that morale is very low across most of the servicing org and people are looking for the exit, but the last 4-5 reviews on here are all people saying how they "LOVE Sequoia". I honestly believe that any negative reviews here are immediately countered by the army of recruiting coordinators trying to maintain the phony facade that people are happy here. And again, everyone lives in fear of saying anything negative internally because there are numerous agents of the CEO just waiting to report back to him. An employee survey was sent out recently but it wasn't anonymized - what kind of company does that?? You will be expected to always be "on" while working here. That's the tone that's set from the top. Think about your future and if work/life balance and family are important to you - Sequoia is trying to grow as fast as a venture backed tech company but attracting talent to the insurance industry is still a major struggle in the Bay Area. You will inevitably pick up the slack as the rate of hiring never comes close to the rate of growth.

1.0
17 Mar 2017

Abysmal Environment - Enter at Your Own Risk

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Made some good friends; some of the folks there are amazing Annual party is lavish

Cons

Burn and churn; despite the higher pay, not worth it The culture is genuinely fake. Everyone is talking the speak but they are also muttering under their breath "FML". I actually heard a colleague say this as he got up to receive his 6month backpack Everyone is terrified of the CEO; he has control issues which stymies progress and then he demands to know why things aren't moving faster

2.0
12 May 2020

Wouldn't go back for all the money in the world

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-competitive pay if you are willing to give up your work/life balance, supplement pay increases because they have no professional growth track -majority of non-management employees are down to earth and helpful because they know what it's like -if you aren’t used to wearing multiple hats, you will here since there is always a lot to do & lack of structure/accountability across teams

Cons

If you’re reading a review here that lists no cons, it was created internally by the Sequoia talent team. If it seems fake, it is fake. They reach out to current employees to ask them to write a review and give them a template of what to write. In my opinion, the most accurate cons have been listed in prior reviews that are deemed most helpful but I want to focus on a few ones that I personally experienced: -There are no salary bands at Sequoia. I know for a fact I was making over $20k more than some of my peers with the same responsibilities. They make it a point to tell you not to talk about salaries to fellow team members. It comes down to how liked you are by management since your manager goes to the CEO for the compensation. -Sleazy sales tactics. Their sales team doesn’t care about being accurate with the cost of the Sequoia product/services. They only care about winning the sale and will do anything necessary to win it. I have seen sales team members mess with numbers on presentations to make Sequoia seem more attractive against their competition. Very unprofessional and misleading. Hypocrisy in management: - Constant heat-checks on how I was feeling and conversations on how to make things better but no action was ever taken or considered - I requested feedback from my managers on things to improve on, only for them to defer the question and eventually wait long enough to avoid the question entirely. I went a year with no real feedback from management. - Constantly asked how to improve issues I encountered, when providing answers, none were acted upon. - They claim one of their main goals is personal/professional development when in reality they have nothing in place for advancement Lack of communication and transparency throughout teams and organization: -I have seen multiple co-workers vanish into thin air to only be notified a week later that ‘they are no longer at Sequoia’. Some had been there 10+ years. Very disrespectful to people who gave a lot to the company. In most cases, they don’t even let the person giving notice to have 2 weeks, they make them leave the same day so they can’t tell any coworkers so they can spin the rhetoric however they want. - I have seen positions be reduced to entry-level, data-entry positions and workloads be unfairly distributed to teams because other teams/managers of those teams refuse to pick up more responsibilities. - I have seen new positions introduced to the organization that completely undermine supporting roles of teammates and managers act like its no big deal why people are frustrated. - I have seen the vast majority of new hires come in with a lot of great energy and can-do attitude only to be burnt out in a few months because the resources aren’t there to support them nor are there any opportunities for growth. If you really want to know how management is here do some research and search for former employees on LinkedIn and look at the timelines they were at Sequoia. Most are under 1-2 years because they figured out what Sequoia was all about, that being the complete opposite of what they preach. Reach out to them, they have no reason to mislead you if they aren’t there anymore. If you are joining a team with a newish manager, odds are they replaced the previous manager because they “do what leadership wants” and don’t have any freedom/decision making in that role because the directions are coming from the CEO Their bonus structure set on garbage metrics that the majority of the teams don’t have control over. Mostly focused on sales goals that only the sales team has control over. At the end of the day, Sequoia is just another shady broker in a shady industry that doesn’t value their “bottom-level” employees. They expect them to work 60+ hours a week during “growth” season to retain a client that only the producer/client service get compensated for retaining.

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Sequoia Response
6y
Thanks for taking the time to provide your post, you clearly put a lot of energy into it. I understand that it can be tough for some to wear multiple hats in an environment where there is a lot to do. We are in growth mode, doing a lot of new and innovative things, and sometimes not everything is already defined and structured. Those that thrive at Sequoia are able to critically think, work cross-functionally, see the goals and objectives of our business and our clients while we pave the path forward. They are also able to manage their priorities at work and at home so they can be their best selves. We are fully supportive of that. We also understand that it's not an environment for everyone. Our People Survey is a precious tool for us to get direct feedback from our team members. There are always areas for improvement and we are proud to be transparent with that and level up together! And finally, I am certain you did not have an opportunity to work closely with any of our sales team members. The company was built on relationships with clients. It’s just not logical to think we’d have the retention and referrals we have if our sales team treated clients that way. Sorry to sound defensive, but having been in this industry for 20 years and seen lots of sales tactics, I couldn’t be more proud of the authenticity and integrity of our sales team. We’re always happy to address any of your comments directly. Please feel free to reach out to any member of our Leadership or Principals team to have that conversation. We wish you the best.
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Glassdoor has 428 Sequoia reviews submitted anonymously by Sequoia employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Sequoia is right for you.