Lost the magic - Anonymous employee Greenhouse Software Employee Review

The culture is unmatched and the leadership at Greenhouse truly cares about its employees. It’s refreshing to work with a customer base that enjoys our product. I really believe in the direction of the company and the improvements that we’re making to the product. Everyone I work with is awesome and I’m incredibly happy here.

I think the comp plan needs to be reevaluated. There’s a lot that is out of your control, and it isn’t setup in such a way that you can blow out your numbers and really overachieve your OTE. I think it was setup for a time when the company was a lot smaller, and the AMs had very large books of business. My only real gripe with Greenhouse is that we are paid commission quarterly instead of monthly, but I enjoy the company so much that I can overlook it.

- Basic tech starter pack (“unlimited” PTO, decent insurance bundle, fertility benefits and misc subscriptions) - Pay is on the lower end of competitive for a midsize tech company, but above the broader market. (Con - the rules for bonuses change frequently despite a year+ of this on CS. It’s clear operations/LT are making it up as they go along) - Colleagues and customers can be great - Received a lot of free swag

As many of the critical reviews point out, GH does more talking than walking their “people” first narrative. The series of layoffs that happened in the past 3 years, the loss of experienced talent, failed acquisitions, a poor response to the Palestinian genocide (more in a moment), a general distaste for the customer, and a lack of vision beyond AI has created a company where the vibes are horrendous and the leadership sauceless. GH has cultivated a company where on one hand, employees are paranoid of using the wrong emoji in fear of critique, on the other, every all hands zoom the chat is the “who’s the funniest meme lord” competition with the CEO. It’s a very cliquey environment here, where the in-crowd gets the hall pass to behave however they want. Much of middle-management are first time leaders with GH the only org on their resume - and it shows. They’ve failed upwards by means of loyalty, exploitation, agreeability, and fitting a certain racial and ethnic profile (spoiler: the company is overwhelming white. BIPOC employees are regulated to individual contributor roles and turnover quickly). This leads to insecure, inconsistent, and incompetent leadership styles. Talent development is a farce. There are mandatory LMS trainings, but you can usually ignore (who had the time), and they’re typically unhelpful anyway. Growth is all self-directed - your manager can barely do their job, what can they teach you? It truly is sink or swim. The inability to manage extends beyond the internal reporting line to how GH speaks and thinks about its customers. Leadership is allergic to accountability, reframing feedback on the product’s stagnation, lack of QoL investment, or pushy upsell tactics as complaints from traitors brainwashed by the competition (or worse, from idiots who clearly don’t read their marketing emails to know about all the wonderful things we’ve done instead! Duh!) It is unsurprising how firmly GH has embraced AI - with a leadership bench comprised of plagiarists and gaslighters, AI fits right in. This company is liberal (pejorative) at best, conservative at worst. As a tech company that was built for the tech vertical, GH does business in Israel, with major AI firms, surveillance companies, etc. without a conscience or moral stance. DEI was renamed IDEA here for a reason; GH doesn’t vocalize its stance, it just reaffirms it is people first and cares while letting its actions contradict itself. After October 7th, leadership had a poll asking the entire company to decide what Israeli-based aid group they should donate an unspecified amount to. This erupted into a status war on slack of Israeli and Palestinian flags. The google form quietly disappeared (did we ever donate? Who knows, there was another RIF anyway!) and so did any future discussion on GH being a people-first or “progressive” company. The general slack channel was *just* re-openedn last fall, and was unveiled as a win. Team meetings are scripted to a fault. Annual kickoffs LITERALLY include contracted script doctors and “talent” coaching. This plus every other leadership faux pas multiplied by every other instance of censorship, condescension, and retaliation has destroyed any semblance of workplace camaraderie. Trust doesn’t exist here. Authenticity doesn’t exist here. Critical and creative thinking doesn’t exist here. GH is a ticking time bomb without a pressure valve. It is the culmination of all the sins from the 2010s startup boom excesses and the ensh*ttification of tech via private equity. Its best bet is to be acquired. HRTech is notoriously competitive; it’s a churn and burn function down market and a major transformation initiative up market. IPO ain’t happening. We offer nothing novel besides brand flair, and given the current recession, with our premium price strategy we’re a tough sell. If you are newer to tech and need a known logo on your resume, grind out a year and move to greener pastures if you can. If you’re experienced, unless you’re truly grasping at straws, skip. No use joining a slowly sinking ship. And if you’re currently still here, unless you have a ton of vested shares, I’d leave if there’s no plan for a liquidity event next year.