Gaslighting, Gatekeeping, Micromanaing - Loan Advisor Lower Employee Review

• Recruiting o Take everything you hear from a recruiter at this company with a grain of salt. Myself and almost everyone I’ve spoken with at the company have been deceived by one of the Lower recruiters in some shape or form. Whether it be job expectations, pay, schedule, etc. you will not be told the entire truth. o Lower practices what many would call “Scavenger Recruiting Tactics”. They wait for announcements of mass layoffs from their competitors and then swoop in taking advantage of the vulnerable people who have been laid off to fill their quotas. • Interdepartmental Relationships o The 3 main departments at Lower are Business Development, Sales, and Operations. These three departments do not work well together at all and there is an incredible amount of animosity between the departments.  The Business Development team will send over anyone who doesn’t hang up on them to the Sales department, no matter if they speak English, are looking for financing, or are even actually present on the other end of the phone. If the line is still connected, they will be sent over. Obviously, this is extremely frustrating for the Loan Advisor as you have a cap on the number of transfers you can get each day and most of your transfers will wind up being worthless. Myself and several other members of the Sales department have voiced these concerns several times and were assured that the leadership of the Business Development team were being made aware and addressing the issues. Then a member of that team would be promoted to Sales and talk about how the leaders of the business development team laughed off those concerns and continue instructing their teams to operate the same way.  Most of the animosity between Sales and Operations comes from the fact that no one has clearly defined responsibilities when it comes to who needs to do what at each stage of the loan process. This inevitably creates a culture of a “That’s not my job” type of response from both sides. If Lower did not change their policies for how loans should be worked every two weeks, this likely would not be as big of an issue. • Training o Do not expect to be thoroughly trained for your role. Lower has adopted a sink or swim approach to training new hires. Essentially, they will teach you the bare minimum that you need to know and cut you loose. When you eventually have questions that you need help with, don’t expect anyone to help you, your managers will tell you that they are too busy or that they also aren’t sure since the majority of management has only been in the industry for about 3-years. • Compensation and Career Advancement o The pay and commission structure for this role are abysmal compared to industry standards and the pay structure is adjusted every few months to make it even more difficult to cover your draw and actually have a chance to make good money. o You will consistently be given more responsibility and tasks to do for each of your files, but you will not receive any additional compensation. o If you do receive a raise at some point, prepare for constant pressure from management to change your pay structure to back to a more commission focused model because “We can’t give out raises like that anymore” and “We will be harder on those of you that have higher salaries”. o The benefits here are essentially nonexistent insurance is terrible and the 401k match is a joke. o This is where the Gatekeeping portion of the title comes in. Prepare for the metrics that you need to hit to be promoted to change constantly. Some people will be grandfathered in to getting promoted on the old metrics and some won’t. There isn’t a clear rhyme or reason for it. Once you do hit the current promotion metrics don’t expect to be promoted. Your manager will pull you aside and say that because there are people at senior level positions that are not performing well you need to hit certain numbers over the next month in order for them to consider you for promotion and prepare for those numbers to be astronomical. Basically, other team members performance will have impact on your ability to get a promotion. • Job Responsibilities o Lower advertises on their website that you will be available to customers 24/7 so prepare to be getting contacted by borrowers any day and anytime. o You will also be forced to give your personal cell phone number to your borrowers just in case you thought that being out of the office would prevent you from being contacted. o Lower will not reimburse you for you any portion of your phone bill for doing this either. o Do not try to log any overtime hours for work done at home because it will not be approved. They will battle you every step of the way before they pay it out. o Prepare for the metrics that are important to management to change on an almost daily basis. There is no consistency in what your managers want from you. Very rarely do they focus on metrics that will actually help you make any money, mostly just what will look good to potential investors. • Management o Far and away the worst management I’ve worked under at any job. o There are several layers or useless middle management that do not actually provide anything to the business or create any revenue. They spend the majority of their day in “meetings” and the rest of it browsing Amazon on the computer in their office or drinking bourbon behind closed doors. The fact is that most of these people are the original Lower crew and are part of the “inside circle” as I like to call It. They started at the company early on and when they grew so quickly during the pandemic they were promoted to management simply on tenure. o Here is where the micromanaging piece of the title comes in. You will be micromanaged from the second you get in the office to the second that you leave. They want to control every aspect of your day. o The management here also participates in mass layoffs like their competitors, I’ve heard several stories of entire departments being let go over a teams call. Job security here is very low especially considering the now rapidly rising interest rates. o Nothing that you produce will ever be enough for your manager. If you get 10 sales In a week you’ll be expected to get 11 the next and you’ll be berated by your manager if you cannot keep up that level of production. I’ve seen this firsthand burn out several top producers because their manager rode them until the wheels fell off. o Prepare for constant pressure from management to come in early, stay late, work through your lunch, and work on your off days. Also prepare to be questioned if you are away from your desk for more than two minutes, some on my team even received calls and texts asking where they were if they were away from their desks. o And finally, the Gaslighting portion of the title. Management controls the number and quality of leads that are bought each week. On the weeks that they do not buy any leads and just recycle the same old leads that have been called for months, they will try to convince you that you are at fault for not converting these leads. Instead of being honest and admitting that lead buy is down your managers will act like it’s your fault. Same thing when rates rise. Instead of acknowledging the rate spike and the obvious effect that has on business you will be questioned by management as to why numbers are down and threatened with having to do mandatory trainings until numbers are better. • Online Presence o I must give credit to the marketing and social media teams at Lower. They highlight things like the barbershop, café, pool tables, etc. and make Lower appear as a very cool office space. Those things are all for show. At Lower you are glued to your desk and would be severely reprimanded if you stopped what you were doing to play pool during work hours. If you try to go to the barber or the café during anytime other than your lunch you will be pulled aside by your manager and told very clearly when you can use those “perks”. Not to mention that more than half the employees at the company do not even work at the building that has those thing available. o It’s mentioned several times in other reviews on this page, but I will include it here as well. The company Glassdoor page is littered with fake reviews. I’ve heard firsthand from former employees at Lower that were tasked with writing fake reviews to offset the bad ones. These reviews are often one to two sentences and will say things like “No cons at this time”. They do not even try to make them believable. Also, several cases of bad reviews mysteriously going missing have been reported.