What is the company culture like at Traba?

Basically, everything that Traba says about itself is true. It really is an ultra high performance workplace that asks a lot out of each person. It really is aiming for the loftiest of end goals, to be a trillion dollar business, and mirroring itself after early Amazon/Google/Uber/Facebook. It really is relentless about performance management and retaining top tier talent. It really does put its money where its mouth is when it comes to working to maximize financial and career outcomes for everyone who joins, esp at this early stage. As a result, it definitely attracts a type, and not everyone is that type, and that's okay. But as a consequence it's built a really unique team, and being around them is incredibly energizing. Everyone is talented, motivated, compassionate. It is NOT a cutthroat culture - people are deeply willing to help each other, and the in-person workplace reinforces these aspects. Akshay and Mike are sensible, smart leaders who listen. As a result, the business is growing wildly on extremely healthy fundamentals.

The time dedication is very real. I work 12 hours a day and add some time on weekends when I need to. The magic is that everyone in the company does, and that is what creates the success and the collaborative culture that we have. Fitness and exercise is deeply encouraged and a large portion of the team works out during the day on a fitness perk, and dinner stipends are provided daily.

You get a $25 Doordash credit for dinner. Only because they force you to work 12+ hours day.

At first, the onboarding experience feels exciting. Leadership shares the mission with enthusiasm and quickly gets new hires bought in. And truthfully, buy-in is essential if you want to succeed anywhere. Unfortunately, the red flags begin to appear soon after. Turnover is extraordinarily high. As many others have noted, the expectation is 9am to 9pm, or later. When the CEO is in the office, it’s common for people to stay past 10pm, and leaving at 9pm earns you the reputation of being a slacker. The company tends to hire finance graduates and place them in cold-calling roles, regardless of background or skill set, largely because they are accustomed to long hours. On some days, the CEO even sits at the entrance, effectively monitoring when people arrive, which contributes to a culture of surveillance rather than trust. At the core, the model remains a traditional contingent labor approach: high turnover, aggressive sales tactics, and a culture that prioritizes optics over substance. They present themselves as different, but once you look beyond the surface, the offering is almost indistinguishable from countless other digital staffing platforms facing the exact same challenges. The organization leans heavily on buzzwords and jargon in its pitch, much of which feels disconnected from the actual needs of operators. The language sounds impressive in theory, but when you strip it down, it doesn’t translate into meaningful solutions or tangible improvements in day-to-day operations. For example, terms like “AI-driven vetting,” “revolutionizing labor,” or “disrupting the staffing industry” are thrown around constantly, but those phrases rarely align with what customers or employees actually experience. It’s also important to mention that employees are strongly encouraged, if not outright required, to leave reviews and social media posts immediately upon joining. On my first day, we were instructed to publish a LinkedIn post with a specific script provided by the company. Given that practice, it’s not surprising to see an abundance of overly positive reviews on Glassdoor that don’t reflect the day-to-day reality. Would love the Traba account to respond on this with something like "Oh were the 1%, a high performing team, and were building something generational, were on the road to 1 trillion, rocket ship, playing for the front of the jersey....

Nothing good to say about the company and their response to negative comments is laughable.

I'm not someone who leaves reviews, but this felt extremely necessary. Please know all these reviews are fake. People are "asked" to write positive reviews because prior to them, Traba's rating was a 1.4.. Employees are being gaslit into thinking Traba is the next big thing in tech (and forced to drink the "kool aid"), but in reality, the product doesn’t work and isn’t scalable. We’re literally just a staffing agency that calls workers all day begging them to show up (this is the strategy and ops role). Don’t even want to get into how poorly they treat workers. Fancy titles for the most mind-numbing, unrewarding work. We lie constantly about the product and use vanity metrics, and it’s starting to show. The CEO tried raising a Series B and came back empty-handed while still boasting about how we're gonna be a trillion dollar company. You’re expected to work 13+ hour days, which is a huge red flag for a company this size. No one takes anything seriously - making fun of leadership and the company behind its backs, and always trying to find ways to sneak out of back doors. Sales reps constantly leaving for “work trips/meetings” just to escape. A prison is the best way to describe this place. Makes sense considering turnover is wild. They're also a true hire and fire scheme company, asking people to move across the country just to fire them in a few weeks. Weirdly obsessed with hiring from prestigious schools to seem impressive, but it ends up being Harvard grads going from real jobs to cold calling all day long. All in all, this place is a joke. If you want zero social life, a toxic culture, and no room for growth, sure. I personally wish I had listened to the honest reviews before joining. Run far away. It’s hard to trust anyone who chooses to stay there. Definitely not the place for anyone with morals.

some people are cool, nothing else

It’s easy to get drawn in by the company’s online presence. They’ve done a good job creating a polished narrative across LinkedIn and social media, amplified by investors and familiar influencer voices. But peel back the curtain, and the reality is far less glamorous.There's a certain VC investor who the CEO doesn't appear publicly without and that investor (who tbh is the one thing that lends this company any credibility) has to be too smart to know there is nothing real here. They dangle a next fund raise in front of recruits but it is actually nowhere in sight. At its core, this is a staffing agency with a tech veneer. The platform has fundamental issues and often doesn’t deliver on what’s promised to clients. As a result, customer churn is a major problem. Much of the team’s time is spent cold-calling workers, desperately trying to get them to show up for shifts — not exactly the innovative experience you'd expect. Despite the branding, the internal culture is deeply unsustainable. The glorification of 12+ hour workdays is worn as a badge of honor, but it's out of touch with what most modern, high-performing startups value: balance, creativity, and long-term sustainability. Good luck asking for any time off. They win deals, then scramble to fill roles through sites like Indeed. There’s little investment in career development or retention, and turnover is high for a reason. If you take a moment to look at employee tenure on LinkedIn or speak with former team members, you’ll notice a clear pattern. It’s also worth mentioning: the budget for travel, food, and lodging is incredibly tight, bordering on unreasonable. And yes — employees are regularly encouraged to leave glowing reviews, so take the positive ones with a grain of salt. The negative ones? Far more reflective of actual experience. There are some genuinely talented individuals here, which makes it even more frustrating to see their skills underutilized or burned out. This is nothing special, it’s all smoke and mirrors. The company has become a cautionary tale within recruiting circles, among investors, and across the broader startup ecosystem — more of a warning than a success story. (looking forward to the Traba account responding to this with some nonsense about how not everyone is cut out for a generational rocket ship and more nonsense about the 1% and the other buzz words they use to make it seem like they're up to something special blah blah blah)

-Somehow able to hire amazing talent -Peers genuinely challenge you and enjoyable to work alongside

To call the senior leadership lost would be an understatement. The CEO regurgitates the same platitudes at the company all hands every week along with any public forum he speaks at to present the company as a genuine market disrupter with amazing momentum. However, speak to any employee and the look under the hood is extremely eye opening. The priorities and direction changes every month. There is no consistency to the engineering roadmap. The company spends 2 weeks before every quarter mapping out the product roadmap just for it all to get thrown out 3 weeks into the quarter when a ops analyst comes up with a small use case that would make their life easier. This all stems from having no product team to help guide the roadmap which is caused by complete delusion by leadership that they're going to hire a superstar PM, with 10 years of experience, willing to work 70+ hours a week, and get paid 60% of the market rate. Despite having amazing talent its all completely wasted by a toxic culture and 0 strategic thinking. The CEO celebrates presciptive behavoir like staying in the office until 10 PM everyday or coming in on a Sunday vs needle moving work and output that moves the company forward. There is also a constant vigilance where he monitors who comes in late, who leaves early, and categorizes these people as low performers. This all leads to a fearmongering culture where collaboration and accountability are neglected and peers are quick to point the finger at one another. The heads of teams end up spending half their time playing mom and dad to a bunch of immature associates and analysts who all blame each other when something goes wrong. Additionally, everyone seen is as disposable and retention is a disaster. Over an 8 month tenure I saw 50% of the company leave and be replaced. The metrics being shared are all fake. The company is able to close customers by completely overpromising and underdelivering then expects an extremely overextended ops team to move mountains to service. This leads to extreme churn and even if customers stay it is with an extremely small volume with 0 growth visibility. Also there is no real product. Their are some cute solutions that help with small use cases but all the success is completely contingent on good operators. There is essentially 0 differentiation from traditional staffing agencies. I would not join expecting your equity to actually become anything. The only value is its a great lesson in how not to run a company.

The only pro was that there were highly intelligent and motivated people working here, but everyone has left. To anyone who is thinking about joining - do yourself a favor and skip this place.

1) All the talent has left: in the past months the entire senior staff has deserted. Heads of departments across sales, finance, operations as well as the COO and COS have all left. Everyone has either left for new roles or "family reasons" which is code for "we can't stand working with the CEO anymore". Everyone who is still here is busy interviewing and has one foot out the door already. 2) CEO is the problem: To summarize, he is incompetent, delusional, and a hypocrite. He runs the company through Claude, outsourcing judgement, vision, and direction to AI chatbots. It's so laughably apparent when he sends slacks that it's all slop, and everyone makes fun of him and just ignores him. 3) Toxic work environment: Everything the CEO does is so performative. He preaches 9-9-6, but sits around doing nothing and comes to meetings unprepared, reusing the same 4/5 phrases (how are you inverting the company today, is this the best thing we can do for the company, don't be a cog, compress timelines). He sits by the entrance every morning to see when people come in and your manager will get a nasty slack if you are 1-2 mins late. In the afternoon he'll set up an "outside meeting" where he'll go to the gym for 4 hours and then come back at 6:59pm to see who is leaving at 7pm. The surveillance culture terrible and he has a few insiders who will rat people out. 4) Low pay / low reward: The CEO tries to sell everyone every week during all hands on how much the equity is going to be worth, and uses that to justify the below average pay. The equity isn't going to be worth anything, the guy is just sooo cheap. Our travel stipend is so unreasonable that when we obviously can't find the right rates he'll yell at us and ask "did you really need to go visit that client? What did you do there that justifies the cost?" 5) Don't value people: The just don't care about the people building the company. There's no training, no ramping, no retaining. The CEO only celebrates people who are agreeable to him and will kick people out with very little notice or explanation. He's vengeful of people who leave and take roles elsewhere or start their own thing.

Excellent pay with rapid growth and promotions for top performers. I have seen people double their pay in about a year. It is amazing working with top-tier people, and that culture is set from the top down. Elite, competitive environment with high standards. Many teammates are former Division 1 athletes who maintain peak physical and mental condition, bringing that same discipline to their work. You get to work alongside like-minded people who are motivated by achievement and results. Company product is also very very good.

Very little work-life balance or vacation time, which is normal for elite, high-performance companies. The pace is fast, expectations are high, and if you do not perform, this is not the place for you and you will get pushed out. Some of the negative reviews on here are likely from people who were pushed out. People who are not committed or who do not believe in meritocracy will not fit in.

culture, comp, and opportunity to grow

quotas and hitting targets can be overwhelming

The core product idea is genuinely strong and addresses a real need in the market. The people doing the actual work are talented and motivated.

The biggest issue at Traba is a disconnect between leadership and what actually matters. Senior leadership seems more focused on optics and internal visibility than on building a great product or a great culture. There's an unhealthy obsession with being seen doing work rather than actually doing it, which creates a performative environment that burns people out without moving the needle. The hours are long but the output doesn't match the investment. More concerningly, the company doesn't treat employees like assets worth retaining. People get let go with little warning after extremely short tenures, which makes it hard to build any trust or safety.

amazing culture and team, can really thrive

don’t join if u don’t like long hours