Debunking the sociopathic founder - Anonymous employee UpHabit Employee Review

1.0
14 Apr 2021
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

If you use the founder as much as he uses you, you can get to places if you don't have a soul.

Cons

The founder is in denial of the 1 star review “It's just one line of code”, and made the claim that it’s completely fasle. Let’s look at the data to outlay the facts. Is this true? “company fired all it's full time employees then offered them contract positions at ridiculously below market rates. When few people accepted, overseas contractors were used.” While I can’t prove that the company did this without disclosing private information, anyone can look at the number of employees listed under UpHabit on LinkedIn (currently at 4). Followed by applying a filter to see how many employees list UpHabit as a previous company (currently at 20). Reviewing the employees listed here indicates that most left in Q4 2020, so draw your own conclusions. Is this true? “management claims to be data driven but all product decisions are made based on the CEOs gut feeling no data involved.” Anyone can verify this by talking to any one of the 20 past employees in UpHabit’s short history. People talk in this industry. Denying the truth only makes management look evil instead of merely bad. Is this true? “Every time you brag to others publicly and to the team about how most of the team are immigrants it makes everyone on the team more resentful. Stop trying to make us feel like we owe you for being in Canada.” The founder loves to virtue signal about his team consisting of women and minorities, as evidenced by this tweet: > "As of this morning, @uphabit’s team is 40% women. I couldn’t be happier (well, even higher would be better)." Is this true? “does not offer a option/share plan but a convoluted plan that is designed to penalize anyone who leaves the company ever. Options only vest if you're employed at a "qualifying exit" even if you stay for 10 years but leave the day before an exit you get 0.” Yes, yikes! The tech industry standard is a 4 year vest with a 1 year cliff, regardless of when an exit happens. Every one of the best startups offer this. Once again, the founder’s tweets verify that he doesn’t offer that: > "We have no options at the moment. I just allocated 15% of an exit day one to be distributed to the team as bonuses using their total company earnings as the weighting factor. So if we’re sold tomorrow, 15% goes to them. No un-allocated options. By design it’s fully allocated." Finally, in the founder’s response of empty rhetoric, he attacks the reviewer instead of the issues, and emphasizes the negativity of the previous review. Funny how negative experiences create negative reviews, but there is also a term that the founder is unaware of - toxic positivity - where any negative attributes are shoved under the rug or lied about, to maintain the false perspective of "positivity". That's even worse for people, and is a form of abuse by a sociopath.

avatar
UpHabit Response
5y
Anyone calling anyone a "sociopath" is not a kind person. Therefore, we don't believe this author is a former employee of UpHabit. If it was, we made a mistake in hiring such an unkind person as that is not the type of people we hire. The author has done a great disservice to their former co-workers (if in fact you worked at the company) as future potential employers of theirs (including your own future employers) will read this review and question the integrity and values of a candidate from UpHabit. In a sense, you're hurting innocent bystanders. That is not a nice thing to do. The founder has experience with Glassdoor and is not concerned by such a review, but to the current and former team members hurt by this, all the founder can say is that they should let it go and focus on their own values, integrity and sense of purpose and kindness. People will try and hurt you from time to time, but it's petty and immature of others to do so. In the grand scheme of things, this is not a big thing. Someone anonymous trying to be hurtful and vindictive is sadly not an uncommon thing. But kindness is thankfully more prevalent in the world. To any potential employers who are reading this posting, please reach out to the UpHabit founder directly and he can vouch for the character and quality of the team members that have worked there, and that he strongly doubts that this post is from a former employee of UpHabit. There are a lot of truly outstanding people that work at UpHabit, including some great former team members that the founder has the utmost admiration and respect for. Clearly this author is not thinking of their former co-workers (should the author have ever worked at the company). However, the company is thinking about them and their success and will do everything to ensure they are supported, both at UpHabit and beyond. There have been a lot of remarkable team members at UpHabit, including current ones. Sincerely, UpHabit

Explore other reviews about UpHabit

5.0
18 July 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Team: UpHabit was founded on a set of values that have helped build the foundation of a great team. The team is really intelligent, passionate and I really enjoy coming into work and solving problems with them. Everyone is kind and passionate. Especially passionate about our product and doing right by our users. In my +10 years experience, this combination of amazing culture and passion for product excellence is a rare one. Learning: There are many opportunities to learn in this environment since it is a startup and is fast paced. Including opportunities to learn from each other and our CEO. Our CEO is very passionate about ongoing learning and gives me the space to make mistakes and learn from them. This has fostered a safe and open working dynamic with our team and is helping us to evolve into the best we can be. (also extremely rare in my opinion) Perks: There are amazing perks and lots of them. Sometimes truly hard to believe but, our CEO continues to go above and beyond to make this environment an enjoyable one. For example: your choice at the top of the line computer, phone bill credit, amazing benefits program, work from home option, free lunches, free beer, free snacks, great office and location, summer hours option and more. These perks are really awesome but truly, the best part of working at UpHabit is that I love coming into the office everyday and tackling challenges with our team.

Cons

There are honestly none that I can find.

avatar
UpHabit Response
7y
Thank you! We're honoured to have you on the team and we couldn't be more fortunate to have such a great group of smart, kind and supportive teammates.
5.0
27 May 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

By far one of the best working environments I've worked in, and I've worked in some pretty dope places. The team is wonderful, and you feel a sense that everyone wants you to succeed. They're all smart in their fields and always show interest in one another. A flat hierarchy with the CEO on top, however, the CEO is more invested in you and always willing to hear you out. Funny enough, in my experience working for small startups is that all the promises you hear you take with a grain of salt, yet Neil (the CEO) not only delivers everything he promises but even more.

Cons

It's a startup like any other, and not sure if you consider this as a con but you are required to be flexible and willing to wear many hats. You might come in one day thinking that you'd want to get X done only to see that Y and Z just got in the way. Otherwise, there's not many to think of. I mentioned that everyone is a rockstar in their field that you might feel a bit underqualified or hesitant in what you're doing however that feeling is mutual among everyone as they all want the best to come out of this endeavour. Working at UpHabit is an experience on its own that is quite hard to replicate somewhere else!

avatar
UpHabit Response
8y
Yes, thank you! One of our mantras is "Make New Mistakes" and we love celebrating the mistakes we make along the way when building a great product for our customers (we call them Habiteers). Mistakes are a part of learning and a sign of real progress. If we're not making enough of them, we're being complacent and that's not how we want to live and grow at UpHabit. Thanks again!
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