NerdWallet Reviews

I guess for all the legitimately amazing stuff, there must be cons, because if not, I'd hope we'd all have the presence of mind to use our experiences here to create our own magical Unicorn Company of Awesomeness post haste. Here's my take: --Honestly, I'm still perplexed by the fundamental, underlying culture at NerdWallet. I'm not sure why you'd set up a company based on a Hunger Games, hedge fund, winner-take-all ethos, but say you did and that worked for you. You can't, then, expect a 'Teach for America' culture to emerge just because you summoned it. That takes a lot of hard, hard work and many companies have failed to turn around very similar ships. And you know it lingers because it keeps flaring up in the weirdest ways: --an email by your manager micro-managing the CEO's 'organic', for-the-people listening tour --tacky 'anonymous' questions at many Founders Q & As -- everything from asking senior management to publicly detail demotions (by name) to straight up public, but faceless beyotching about a lot of new desks appearing in the office, ostensibly cluttering the workspace. You are left to wonder...(a) were people just not raised properly? or (b) is there more culture work to be done here? --For certain next year's reviews could benefit from more oversight in a base-line HR/best practices perspective. Some were legendary this year -- and not in a great or positive way. And because of this lingering culture issue, it's easy to take staff departures and assign some larger meaning to each but that would be 100% wrong here. At least in the one case I know about, it was as simple as simple gets -- a better, more attractive offer. Happens. In all, these are growing pains that I'm confident will be fixed. Give NerdWallet a serious look.

- Recently fired 40 people with absolutely zero notice, including the COO and VP of Growth. Firings were arbitrary and not performance-based. Reason given was "to clear the way for the company to succeed." Newly hired CPO pulled off a major coup and consolidated all power under himself despite doing being out of the office for a month. - One of the most stressful companies I've ever worked at. The culture is relentless and cutthroat while also being stupidly inefficient. - Decisions are either made at a glacial pace or immediately and impulsively with no justification. - Forget the mission of being unbiased and consumer first. NW now offers sponsored placements in its recommendations to the highest bidder, without making it clear to the consumer. There's no scaleable way to make money without screwing over the user somehow. - Don't be misled. This is not a tech company - it's an affiliate marketing company that makes all its money by gaming the Google search results. Google is constantly catching up and I wouldn't bet on NerdWallet to win the fight. There is no product and no way to capture members right now. Competitors who are far newer in the space are light years ahead of us.