Disheartening and Disappointing - Anonymous employee Gusto Employee Review

2.0
27 Apr 2020
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

+ There are some genuine, sincere, and wonderful employees. I would say the people that you work with define your experience. Gusto is a warm culture, this contributes to a wonderfully successful candidate interview experience. + Gusto is intentional and does think the best for all stakeholders, but primarily focused on the customer - which is good. + Gusto is a warm culture, there are a lot of fun events and informal social gatherings. San Francisco tends to be more heads down then our Denver counterpart.

Cons

- My manager or, in Gusto speak, "my people empowerer ("PE")" Unfortunately, I had a rocky relationship with my PE. Unfortunately, the way Gusto's performance management process is set up is that it is completely up to your PE's discretion to assign you a rate, which then has negative impact on things later down the line. (i.e., promotions or future compensation increase). PEs come in all shapes and sizes, some are clearly not ready to lead a team but are forced to due to company growth. To be honest, why does Gusto conduct the values/motivation alignment interview if you hire employees that do not care about their own team and just their image? Terrible. - Be honest. While we preach our vision, mission and values - it is not always lived out. Just like other companies. We spend so much time talking about our customers, but where is the focus on employees? For example, the ownership mentality is held to an exclusive pool of employees and you can just translate this into being responsible for your work. You set employees up with unrealistic expectations and it all comes crumbling down, when they realize Gusto will ALWAYS act in the interest of their finances and customers. Not what is beneficial for employees. - Lack of focus on the employee experience. Gusto does a stellar job on the candidate interviewing process, but there's literally no support onto the rest of the People Team where they need the most help to help engage and uplift the current Gusto population. Growth should be strategic, both at the beginning and the end of the employee lifecycle. - Decent San Francisco office, but poor communication. It is in the Dogpatch, so it's grungy and industrial. The pathway to work was demolished over a weekend and there was no communication. - The office's temperature is never right. It is either way too hot or way too cold. In the winter, they turn on the floor warmers, but given that the office is literally a warehouse it turns it into a greenhouse. Way too hot, people are complaining and sweating all the time.

Explore other reviews about Gusto

5.0
10 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Smart and friendly coworkers. Excellent team culture

Cons

Tunnel visions on AI a bit too much

2.0
20 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The product is genuinely good, too bad the same can’t be said for how they treat the people who sell it.

Cons

Leadership talks a big game about people-first culture but the reality doesn’t match. The Chicago office expansion felt like a poorly thought-out experiment, new hires were brought on without a clear long-term commitment, and layoffs came without warning, leaving people blindsided. Crossing a billion dollars in revenue and still cutting employees sends a clear message about where workers rank on the priority list. Remote work flexibility is also a glaring weakness. For a company selling HR software to modern businesses, their internal stance on where employees can work is surprisingly rigid and hypocritical. The “flexibility” messaging is mostly optics. The broader concern is the AI roadmap. The automation push feels less like an innovation strategy and more like a slow wind-down of the workforce. Employees aren’t blind to it, it creates anxiety and erodes trust. The culture of transparency they promote externally is largely a facade internally.

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