Pros
They hire really great people - I made a lot of friends
Cons
They do not care about their employees, teachers, or students. They only care about money - profits over people. Unrealistic quotas were set quarter after quarter with only a small percentage of AEs meeting their goals. This was absolutely no reflection on the skills of the AEs as deals were being funneled to a select few who were absolutely overwhelmed with deals and the rest of the AEs were left to twiddle their thumbs and work with their embarrassingly small pipelines. With the obnoxiously high quotas, came desperation. The sales leadership and CEO advocated for hounding prospects in a way that was disrespectful. If you did close a deal, then came the terrible product that screwed the school districts over. The quality of programs being put out are absolutely abysmal. As a former teacher myself, I felt terrible selling a product I knew was going to fail. Programs often had teacher allocation, certification, and subbing issues just to name a few (there are many many more common issues). Another issue I noticed is that curriculum is seriously lacking. Units and lessons lack engagement, creativity, and are just boring. Students usually are just following along with a powerpoint. The icing on the failing product of a cake is that employees are treated terribly. Leadership loves to pick favorites, put them on a pedestal with more opportunities for success, and then talk down to and gaslight the others into thinking they should be producing the same results with drastically less opportunity. It all came to a head the first week of December when Elevate laid off approximately 1/4 of their employees. When explaining why the layoffs were happening, leadership made it very clear that it wasn’t because of the recession, but rather internal mismanagement of money. Lol, that is way worse if you ask me! I’ll leave you with some quotes from leadership during my time at Elevate. “You are all just number signs and if you don’t like it you can leave.” “That demographic just isn’t as successful in sales positions.” -When asked why there aren’t more POC in sales at Elevate “You shouldn’t be enjoying your weekend if you aren’t hitting your quota.” “I don’t care if you’re on vacation, you’re in sales.” P.S. A lot of positive reviews popped up after the lay-offs in December. My guess is that they are fake reviews made to boost their rating on Glassdoor…