Gremlin Reviews

3.3

50% would recommend to a friend

(23 total reviews)

Kolton Andrus

58% approve of CEO

44% positive business outlook

Gremlin has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 23 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Gremlin employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

23 reviews
2.0
26 Mar 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Fast-paced and lots to learn in this new market. Fully remote culture since inception. Small team with the ability to move quickly.

Cons

Founders are inexperienced and leadership has been lacking. Poor hiring at senior levels. A lack of product direction and focus has lead to burn out and unclear roadmap. Culture can be toxic and lacks psychological safety in many roles.

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Gremlin Response
9mo
Thank you for your detailed feedback. Paving the way in a newer market is definitely like the wild west! Gremlin currently has experienced leadership that’s provided our employees with clear direction and a vision everyone is excited to stand behind. From the top down, we care about each other and work hard to ensure everyone can be successful in their roles and have a sense of belonging.
2.0
7 Sept 2018

First time founders, go in with eyes open

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

+ Both the SF and SJ offices are nice, well lit, and reasonably stocked with snacks. + They fly in remote people regularly for face time, which is great for morale and commmunication. +Great credibility with founders who built this at Netflix and Amazon first. +Incredible early customer list and traction/sales momentum, so your equity is likely to be valuable (if they don't try to take it back). + Friendly coworkers with people that want to help customers succeed. + Office manager is treated with great respect and gratitude. + CEO has kids, so work-life balance is good for a startup; expect to work hard 8-10 hours a day and have your weekends/evenings mostly to yourself.

Cons

- First time founders with careers at big companies building internal tools means they don't know a lot of things people with careers in startups think of as common knowledge. - Depending on your role, they may not understand your day to day, nor drivers of success. - Founders have issues in scaling the organization like waiting too long to hire an engineering manager/director, overextended success team, surprise attempts to claw back employee equity, lack of a defined recruiting and sourcing pipeline, not understanding how many projects are too many for a PM, and an over-reliance on Slack interrupting engineers too often, etc. - There was a regular rotation of putting people “in the dog house” across all departments, which typically related to a lack of understanding of that role. - There was no talk about values as the company grew. - Company all hands were infrequent given size and remote nature (once a quarter-ish), with very little Q&A time. - If diversity is important to you, you may want to look elsewhere. Company is ~85% male overall and 100% male in sales and prod/eng teams. - Recruiting relied on random inbound and personal network referrals, which is likely the main reason for the imbalance.

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Gremlin Response
7y
Start-ups are a challenge for both founders and employees. We appreciate the Pros that you listed above, and we’re proud of how we’ve expanded on those values since your time with the company. Over the past year we’ve more than doubled our workforce, on-boarded many successful customers, brought in another top-tier investment partner, and bolstered our leadership team with industry veterans. Our employees report strong engagement and support for management and we remain very excited about our future. Not every employment opportunity ends up being the perfect fit, and while we disagree with many of the Cons that you listed we respect your perception. Some of the things you listed were valid at the time, but are no longer true. What we will say is that these first-time founders are advised by sophisticated advisors and experienced executive leadership. Departments are led by seasoned professionals who organize and prioritize projects. We hold biweekly All-Hands meetings with time dedicated for Q&A (spontaneous and presubmitted). We want to address the Diversity and Inclusion comments. This is something we expect will require sustained, focused attention of our leadership team. We are absolutely committed to building a diverse team, and building an environment where people from underrepresented groups want to keep their careers here for years to come. In practical terms, this means we’re committed to paying equitably, reviewing for bias in all promotion decisions, sustained and continual attention to bias in hiring, and fleshing out our leadership team with more diverse viewpoints. As a startup, we still have a lot of work to do on these fronts, but we’re already seeing good results. We expect that to improve over time as we demonstrate our commitment to inclusive, supportive teams. Gremlin has been and will continue to be a great place for ambitious professionals to contribute and lead. It’s difficult to get everything right for everyone all at once, but our team is striving to build something great and improve upon our successes. We wish you the best as you continue your career.
1.0
14 Jan 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Some smart folks still there

Cons

Toxic work environment, high amount of employee churn, high amount of customer churn, lack of overall leadership

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Gremlin Response
9mo
We are sorry you had such a negative experience during your time here and appreciate the detailed feedback. Our current average tenure is more than 3-years, and we’ve had only a couple voluntary departures in recent years. We have made incredible strides to make Gremlin a place where every employee can thrive and feels like they belong.
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Glassdoor has 24 Gremlin reviews submitted anonymously by Gremlin employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Gremlin is right for you.