Pros
* the training was great. The teachers really try to get you up to speed and comfortable solving problems for WHOOP at quickly as possible. They cultivated an uplifting vibe and checked in on us regularly as we learned. * you get familiar with a lot of different software platforms used to help customers. * it gets pretty cross-functional sometimes, like interacting with engineering, order fulfillment, management, etc * the culture, which was mainly established by the most vocal of management, was usually very happy and seemed safe * the product is nice to have and use. * when I was there, the vacation policy was fair, and you can let go of all your cares while you were gone - other folks in your team got your back. * their Pro membership was quite fun. As a product, I think they're really on to something. * direct managers/team managers would be generally supportive * - We had a say in our schedules, and I appreciated that
Cons
* pay is pretty low, so be prepared to side hustle or seek other work as you gain experience. * some questionable behavior from upper management: spending lots of money on marketing (like a superbowl commercial) while letting people go, pushing a buggy product to retail consumers and offering patches that didn't fix issues for many people (sometimes it all felt like a big experiment). Like I said, I think they are really on to something, but they charge consumers a lot more than competitors. Overall, it's hard to understand the strategy of upper management and to agree with it. * Things didn't seem very busy after a while, which could have meant that the product was working great or retail purchases were plummeting. Considering the massive layoffs that occurred, I think it was the latter. During my time there, I and my colleagues would get a lot of requests to cancel memberships and issue returns. * upper and middle management seemed to be quickly burnt out or let go. During my stint there, lots of people were leaving inexplicably, and one particularly prominent figure left due to burnt out. It's hard to work there and not feel very dispensable. * the culture is happy and cool, but personally it felt like I was oscillating between boredom and burnout for a few reasons: 1. The surveillance system was stressful: a little beep meant you had 30 seconds to address a concern or you would get in trouble. When I was waiting for customers and had to use the bathroom....those were stressful times. 2. The QA was a bit out of touch: those that reviewed our communication (the QA team) with customers had the tendency to score us highly when we sounded the most robotic, verbose, and friendly in a flowery sort of way. Sometimes, customers would score us highly but we'd get a poor mark on our interaction because we left out a single sentence or gesture. Similarly, I would get scored highly for a dialogue but the customer would accuse me of being a robot. Ultimately, customer satisfaction seemed to matter a lot more than QA scores. The QA team was friendly, and we liked them as people, but we didn't really hold their scrutiny in high regard. - Engineers would sometimes get a bit defensive when we relayed negative feedback to them. We were just the messengers. Sometimes troubleshooting with Salesforce admins or Shopify admins meant first navigating a bit of ego. - the slogan/value of "We work at an uncomfortable pace": I enjoyed my training at WHOOP, but there was no training on how to be uncomfortable in a healthy way. It seemed to be expression to persuade people to stay in fight/flight mode. I performed well at this company despite this value, and not because of it. - I didn't feel like my job was safe, even if I met/exceeded metrics. It was difficult to feel the support of HR as they might've been burnt out/overworked during my time there. I wish them all the best, though. - I wasn't there long enough to confirm this, but I suspected some level of nepotism. The company was started by Harvard students, and "coincidentally" mid-level management positions seemed flooded by very young recent graduates from Harvard. Meanwhile, people working for years with WHOOP wouldn't be considered to take the leap up from customer service. While I hold nothing against a recent graduate getting some solid management experience, tenured employees should be granted priority and similar access opportunities for this kind of job experience. Instead, "promotion" for customer service had the tendency to be sideways (i.e. moving from Analytics customer service to Order Fulfillment customer service, and the pay would stay the same)