Came in Enthusiastic, now I can't wait to leave - Credit Analyst Upstart Employee Review

2.0
19 July 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Good benefits for a beginner - Work from home is nice

Cons

I originally wasn't going to say anything or post a review, but after seeing so many positive reviews that don't tell the whole story, I felt I needed to speak up about Upstart . - Management will lie to your face about what is truly going on in the company. They'll expect you to believe what they say and not ask questions. - Very little respect for the operations department. They ask us to work over holidays, make us meet impossible demands, don't pay us more for doing more work. And then act as if we should be grateful to them for keeping us around. All while upper management gets the better benefits, holidays, and work-life balance. When they told us we were to take phone calls now (which wasn't in our job description) They refused to pay us more to properly compensate us now having 2 jobs. Some coworkers of mine got transferred to other departments where the work was harder/more strenuous and they weren't paid more to compensate for the greater workload either. They're trying to get their employees to work more positions at a discount. - there's a very noticable start-up vibe. Often times during the company-wide Friday meetings, the CEO just says fluff and doesn't deliver any action plans for the company's poor performance. Phrases like "We know we have the best people" or "we'll come out of this stronger" do little to help me cope with the state of the company. - Communication is a mess. It's honesty some of the worst I've ever seen. Emails get sent out to wrong departments all the time or are missing critical details needed for comprehension. The amount of times I've had to reach out to a person for clarity is numerous. Upstart management has even admitted at times their communication has suffered as a result of growing so quickly. - I came into this company very enthusiastic, but after a while the reality of the business set it. Upstart lures in young people with attractive offers and seemingly good pay and benefits. But after so long here, you see that most people just care about getting promoted and making more money under the guise of "expanding access to credit". I plan to leave this company once some other job opportunities come through that are in the pipeline. I could go on about why working at Upstart has been a disaster, the list goes on... But I will keep it to this for now.

Explore other reviews about Upstart

5.0
11 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Promising product, competitive pay, lots of work

Cons

Unstable, leadership is hit or miss

2.0
10 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Compensation. Only reason I don't give them 1 star. - Remote Work - Pretty diverse

Cons

- incredible amount of politics, process, and red tape for an engineering org on the smaller side - Chaos. There were three re-orgs between Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. Actual madness. - High turnover is embraced. They will gladly let go of long time high performers with years of tribal knowledge and hire someone new with more experience. You eventually up with a team where everyone has hardly any domain knowledge. - Fear driven environment. You will hear performance mentioned every week in company comms and how they want everyone to be X% more productive with AI. - Speaking of AI usage, they take it to the next level. Slack messages, Jira tickets, code, design documents. All made with AI. It will be the most overly verbose word slop you can think of and you'll get a pat on the back for being so thorough. My manager seriously told me how she just copied a technical design doc into chatgpt and read that. Wild. - Cutthroat. With the new focus on productivity gains and measuring performance with PR volume, LOC, and token usage, people hardly review PRs anymore because it gets them nothing. Be prepared to spend lots of time begging your team and other teams for reviews and then waiting. Unless you are good at playing politics and have the time / energy for it, I would avoid this place at all costs. If you are just looking for something short term that pays well and encourages you to use AI for any and everything, this place works well, just don't expect to stick around for long as you're considered a veteran at 2 years with all the turnover they have. I'm glad I left for something else when I did because I see on linkedin they've had more layoffs since.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All