Limeade Reviews

I regret not taking the negative reviews to heart when I was interviewing for Limeade. I gave excuses like, "maybe things have changed since the last review." As my time here continues, each week, Limeade manages to reach a new low. The camel's back was broken by the last straw a very long time ago, yet the camel is repeatedly impaled by subsequent "last" straws. A further analogy: Limeade is trying to make the camel look alive by propping it up on the last straws. So, where do we begin? COMPENSATION - When I received my offer to work at Limeade, I was told my base salary, but was also told that employees are eligible for a 10% bonus, so essentially my total take-home salary would be my base salary + the 10%. The fine print of that is Limeade has never awarded the full 10%, which was not mentioned or that you don't even get your performance bonus (half of the 10%) if the company doesn't do well. All of that is irrelevant because flash forward to 2021, leadership revoked bonuses for everyone, except for directors and above. How convenient. Rather than explain to us that Limeade isn't doing well, they decided to point to "research" saying that the bonus structure doesn't work. - When receiving a subpar raise, one that barely accounts for inflation, I was told that I should feel good about it because there were others that got less than I did. This is not okay. BURNOUT - Conversations of burnout have been happening since the day I started. I mean, really, they've been happening for years, based on all these Glassdoor reviews. - Any time we bring up burnout, we are told to talk to our managers. We are told that leadership is listening. That's all they do. They listen. There's no action. Except, they will claim that there will be a burnout mitigation plan, which is, to talk to your manager. - In all their outward facing communication and marketing, Limeade says companies need to care about burnout because it leads to turnover, which leads to my next point. TURNOVER - Turnover is rampant. In my short tenure here, there's been turnover from top to bottom, more notably, a change in CTO and CFO. The People Team, the group Limeade is supposed to value most, has lost more people than I can count. And within R&D alone, quality employees have left. - While there are a number of backfill positions posted, within R&D, many quality developers were replaced by contractors. I do not disagree that contractors have a purpose and are very useful in working on finite, short projects. However, in a place where the software is the core of the company, contractors do not work well with creating longevity of the software. SOFTWARE / TECH - A review from 2018 predicted the future that the tech stack is not sustainable and it is not now. - Do not work here as a software developer. Your skills will stagnate. As a different review points out, taking risks are not appreciated or acknowledged. - This is a feature factory. We are so busy shoveling features out the door and we definitely do not make quality software. Automated testing is non-existent, and every good developer knows that testing is what gives your work credibility, quality, and confidence. Unit testing is hardly done, and that is the least expensive kind of automated testing. - You will not be looked kindly upon if you say there are too many features and priorities happening at once. The product owners supposedly have their hands tied, which we can't even trust or verify because we have no knowledge of what happens on the business side of things AGILE / SCRUM - This one pains me, knowing from other previous reviews that scrummasters have come and gone at Limeade previously. - A brand new team was created to implement agile / scrum. These are new employees to the company who didn't take any time to learn about Limeade, the software, and how people are currently working to deliver software. Instead, they take a lot of pride in shoving process down your throats. You will not be allowed to ask clarifying questions on the process or ask to have some allowance for other processes because the team will be ruthless in shutting you down, telling you that you haven't achieved "agile maturity." - Furthermore, this team is built on individuals' knowledge of scrum from the early 2000s. Scrum.org and Scrum Alliance are constantly iterating and improving on Scrum, as they should, in the whole spirit of what agile means. DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION - Equity, especially regarding pay equity, is a cursory effort. In your yearly performance review, you will receive a salary range that is "market value" of your position. After receiving that information, if you feel you are underpaid, you're stuck because there is no contingency plan in place to get you where you need to be. - They say they have a council specifically for DEI efforts. While I think the person who leads it is very passionate and legitimately cares about DEI, Limeade as a whole does not actually care. - We supposedly work with a third party consulting group to help us with DEI. That's all that was mentioned to us; not the what or the how. MANAGEMENT - They will throw innocent, unknowing people to go be managers at Limeade. I have no idea what goes on in the yearly "manager summit" but from what I know, many managers are burned out and unsupported. We know that managers feel unsupported because of the yearly Engagement & Inclusion survey that Limeade puts out. - When managers feel unsupported, they are in turn, unable to support their direct reports. In all companies, managers can make or break a person's experience. While I think my manager is a nice person, I don't feel like I am able to get the support I need. GASLIGHTING - I did feel like this needed its own category. No matter how legitimate you feel your concern is, the response from leadership is to gaslight. - For example, Microsoft came out with a competing product and employees were concerned. Employees were gaslighted by leadership with a response of toxic positivity (another giant theme in the C-suite). - When employees raised concerns about not backfilling full-time positions that we desperately need, we were gaslighted yet again, saying that they technically did backfill - with contractors, of course. - Nothing is leadership's fault, which is also why (full circle back to burnout) they are pushing managers to address burnout. It can't possibly be the organization's problem. If this isn't enough to convince you to not work here, I can at least say I tried. I read all the reviews from the past 5 years and nothing has changed. It's a vicious cycle and nobody wants to genuinely and authentically address issues.