Work Here If You Love To Be Micromanaged - Customer Service Representative (CSR) Upstart Employee Review

2.0
6 Jan 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The pay is pretty good, at the time I worked there, they were giving out additional pay to help cover internet costs for working from home. Sometimes random bonuses, etc., so that was nice.

Cons

They will micromange you half to death here. If you come back from lunch even one to two minutes late, when you're otherwise on time out of the whole week, expect a message nearly immediately. They watch you like a hawk. I understand needing to monitor performance but having someone constantly over your shoulder makes for severe anxiety. Work-life balance here is a joke, they expect you to be in a certain place at a certain time, even though you work from home. Even if you show up in all scheduled meetings and do all your work. It's ridiculous. Also the calls are horrendous. Unless you like math and very very unhappy callers just leave this place alone. I found a job with better hourly pay that was WAY more flexible with better benefits that didn't care where I was as long as I was on time and getting my work done.

Explore other reviews about Upstart

5.0
11 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Promising product, competitive pay, lots of work

Cons

Unstable, leadership is hit or miss

2.0
10 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Compensation. Only reason I don't give them 1 star. - Remote Work - Pretty diverse

Cons

- incredible amount of politics, process, and red tape for an engineering org on the smaller side - Chaos. There were three re-orgs between Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. Actual madness. - High turnover is embraced. They will gladly let go of long time high performers with years of tribal knowledge and hire someone new with more experience. You eventually up with a team where everyone has hardly any domain knowledge. - Fear driven environment. You will hear performance mentioned every week in company comms and how they want everyone to be X% more productive with AI. - Speaking of AI usage, they take it to the next level. Slack messages, Jira tickets, code, design documents. All made with AI. It will be the most overly verbose word slop you can think of and you'll get a pat on the back for being so thorough. My manager seriously told me how she just copied a technical design doc into chatgpt and read that. Wild. - Cutthroat. With the new focus on productivity gains and measuring performance with PR volume, LOC, and token usage, people hardly review PRs anymore because it gets them nothing. Be prepared to spend lots of time begging your team and other teams for reviews and then waiting. Unless you are good at playing politics and have the time / energy for it, I would avoid this place at all costs. If you are just looking for something short term that pays well and encourages you to use AI for any and everything, this place works well, just don't expect to stick around for long as you're considered a veteran at 2 years with all the turnover they have. I'm glad I left for something else when I did because I see on linkedin they've had more layoffs since.

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