Wouldn’t be the designer I am without the support from upperstudy - Anonymous employee Upperstudy Employee Review

Great mentorship and growth opportunities

Unclear ways to grow into startups

they'll teach you some basic product design skills

It's an agency that pairs new junior designers (you) with a director. Then the pair of you get paired up helping one of their SaaS clients with their own design, It's a good idea in theory but... • The director-to-junior design ratio is about 1:15. And so the director doesn't really do anything besides set you up with their best practices - ie, how to take notes. They check out after about 2 weeks, and assign a manager to you that checks in on you daily. The manager checks in on EVERY other designer (roughly 30) so they're extremely overworked and don't provide much value to you since they can't remember your name. • they pay minimum wage and tease you with the idea that they will help transition you into a full-time role with the company you were assigned to; but it's pretty rare since many companies terminate their agreement. Why? UpperStudy is very expensive from a monetary and equity standpoint. And the output from you, the junior designer, isn't worth paying the 2-for-1 premiums they try to sell themselves on (director AND designer). I saw multiple instances, including my own, where the company terminated the agreement and the junior designer was put on standby until a new client came onboard. • There is NO paid time off, lol. You'll work like a dog for minimum wage.