How flexible is your schedule working at Guild?

People: Truly amazing teammates and colleagues. I consistently felt fortunate to work with supportive managers and leaders who genuinely cared about me as an employee, but as a person. There was a strong emphasis on career growth and development, and I always felt encouraged to pursue new opportunities. Family Planning: If you’re planning to have a child, Guild is an especially supportive place to work. They offer generous parental leave for all parents, along with flexible scheduling to help accommodate different needs. In addition, employees receive a $10K benefit that can be used toward family planning, including fertility treatments or adoption services. ERGs (Employee Resource Groups): Guild invests meaningfully in ERGs, providing funding and support for communities to host events and build connections. While participation can vary depending on role requirements, and there are opportunities to further strengthen leadership engagement, the overall level of support is still stronger than what many companies offer. Promotion & Mobility: In my experience, strong performance is recognized, and promotions tend to follow when you’re consistently delivering. At more senior levels, there are also good opportunities to move across teams and departments. Previously, Guild invested more heavily in entry-level and associate roles to help employees transition into new areas, though those opportunities have become more limited over time - this has caused some tension in Guild’s culture because there are many that want to move within but struggle to do so. Educational Benefits: Guild offers employees access to the same educational programs it provides to its partners. This makes it easy for employees to pursue further education, whether for personal growth or career advancement.

Many of the challenges below reflect a shift from what Guild previously offered to how things have evolved in recent years. Layoffs & Stability: Job stability has become a concern at Guild. In my experience, there have been multiple rounds of layoffs (large-scale and more targeted) which has changed the overall sense of security that once existed. These decisions have impacted a wide range of employees, from newer hires to highly experienced team members. There have also been changes to how the company supports employees through transitions. Previously, departing employees were offered more extended resources (such as continued access to education benefits, keeping their work computers - which is vital for job searches, and career support). The current approach is more sterile, expect only severance and COBRA support. Additionally, Guild does not offer a 401(k) match, instead emphasizing equity as a long-term benefit. While this may be valuable in the future, recent changes—such as a shorter post-employment window to exercise options (Guild used to offer laid off employees 2 years to buy options and now only allows 90 days) can make it difficult for employees to fully realize that benefit, especially during an unexpected transition. Benefits: Benefits have also shifted in a negative way. While Guild was once a standout in this area, recent changes have made the experience more complex, particularly those outside of Colorado and California. Navigating coverage, billing, and third-party vendors can require significant time and effort, and in some cases may create friction in accessing care. Going to my next point - Guild seems to be moving in the direction of a return to office (CO and CA) and less support for a remote workforce and this shows in the benefits they offer their current remote workers. Also check the current job descriptions - they all have a hiring preference for Colorado residences and emphasize being in the office. Remote Work & Location Dynamics: Guild transitioned to a remote model during the pandemic, but there are now signals of a shift back toward in-office presence. While this is framed as flexible, there appears to be increasing emphasis on proximity to certain office locations. In practice, some employees outside of core geographic hubs feel less included in that long-term vision. Work-Life Balance: Work-life balance can be demanding, particularly as the company continues to grow and evolve. Flexibility exists in theory, it can sometimes translate into extended work hours to keep up with expectations. The pace and intensity may not be sustainable for everyone, and the culture has shifted from what it was in earlier years.

- benefits - flexible work schedule (for the most part)

It was great working for Guild when I initially was hired. It seemed like we were actually making a difference and caring for the people we were working with. It seemed that Guild started to move away from putting the student first to putting the business first. They started to care more about their outward image than taking care of their own employees. They wanted to preach advancement in the workplace but there was little opportunities to advance within the company itself. They hired upper management who had no idea what they were doing and coming up with metrics that were unattainable. Processes and systems made no sense and made our jobs harder. The ICs were the best part of the job. Truly caring for each individual who wanted to take that next step in their education and achieve goals that seemed so unattainable to them. Heading into their new business model, this has completely gone down the drain and the company acts more like a call center instead of truly setting up members for success.

-Professional development opportunities - I've been given countless opportunities to take on more challenging work and grow my career at Guild. I am literally a different professional from when I joined the company, in a good way. -Ability to utilize incredible FREE education benefits -Incredibly smart, hardworking, and kind colleagues at every level -The mission is important and the work is interesting -Every manager I've ever had has cared about me as a person and supported my growth and development -Excellent salary and benefits -Very people-centered benefits and policies (5 weeks paid sabbatical; ramp up period after leaves; family planning benefit, and a lot more) -Unlimited PTO (I've never had a PTO request declined, ever, and I actually use it to its extent) -Work/life balance is excellent -Flexible schedule

-By far the biggest con to working at Guild is that things change quickly and you have to be flexible to thrive here (or even enjoy it); and even then, the pace of change can feel exhausting. -Meeting heavy culture which can also feel exhausting at times, especially for leaders/people managers -Wish there was a 401k match -There is a small but vocal contingent of mostly former employees who seem to be hell bent on bashing Guild publicly. It's uncomfortable to watch.

A lot of reviews seem to be from disgruntled former employees, so as a former employee, I'd like to give a positive perspective on this company :) - Guild has an amazing mission, and having previously come from a large corporate company that only cared about profits, I was really inspired by the altruistic work that Guild is doing and was energized to come to work every day to support said mission. Is Guild a for-profit company? Yes. But is the intent still to allow workers to gain a higher education and opportunities for advancements in their companies? Absolutely. Also the founder (Rachel) really really cares about the company and its people. Hard stop. - Guild provided personnel with a PLETHORA of benefits that people don't seem to acknowledge: Really good health insurance (low deductible plans were free and high deductible were like ~$20 copay?), flexible work schedules, a lot of PTO (I will circle back to some commentary on this one), bereavement leave, 14 weeks of parental leave, free mental health services, 1-2 hours of free legal advice, disability leave, a free book from a local bookshop every year, a solid monthly grocery/internet/phone bill/whatever subsidy, random Guild swag (not just during onboarding), holiday gifts, a subsidy to buy your office set-up, budget for conferences, ~$5,600 for internal personnel to partake in educational courses / get a degree, and several more I can't think of right now. - Unlike some companies that demand you work the exact 9-5 hours, Guild was generous about letting personnel have flexible work hours, as long as they got their work done. At my old job, it was hard to find time for dentist/doctor/vet appointments, but at Guild I never had to worry about that. - A lot of folks have criticized the unlimited PTO policy changing to 4 weeks (with only 2 consecutive weeks), but I would like to add the context that people were abusing this policy, so Guild was forced to crack down. Truthfully, when I needed more than the two consecutive weeks, or more than 4 weeks total, I worked with my manager to schedule more time but made a game plan for when the work would get done. I did the same with my team and it worked out great. - Guild was really great about giving a voice to its personnel. Some people may disagree with me on this one, but I was truly shocked when I joined the company and saw how openly people could express their opinions on Slack. At my old company, it would not have been tolerated if you talked about politics, religion, pay, social issues, complaints on management style, complaints on how events were run, etc. I think a lot of folks at Guild took it for granted that we were able to talk so openly about social issues, post about our personnel lives in certain Slack channels, complain about lack of transparency in the Guild All-Hands, etc. In my opinion, personnel were given a lot of freedom of speech in this regard. - Guild uses a lot of newer / modern technologies. I have audited so many companies that use old, outdated, and frustrating technologies, so I have a great appreciation for Guild's infrastructure. - Guild was really good at employee recognition and was constantly praising the work of different teams - I've noticed that on a lot of the reviews, people complain about management's bad strategic direction, lack of transparency, etc. The only thing I will add here is that it's easy for people down in the weeds (myself included) to be unable to see the high level view of a company and critique certain decisions. For instance, I was part of the layoffs in May of 2024, and while it was a bummer to leave Guild, I recognized that Guild needed to recapture the revenue from those terminated personnel's salaries in order to have a certain amount of money on its income statement as part of its next valuation. If Guild decides to go public someday, this is critically important. While it was hard to get laid off, I am happy that this allowed the company to stay afloat and successful and allowed my coworkers to continue to have jobs - Guild does pay *most* positions really really well and is constantly comparing salaries to industry standards and making adjustments

- Senior leadership required each department to spend a lot of time on reporting and administrative work that didn't seem to be used - The OKR process was convoluted and didn't reflect the objectives of each department. Managers were required to update the progress of projects monthly in a really confusing system. However, I think this was part of the growing pains of maturing a company. - While I do really appreciate that Guild required frequent checkins between reports and supervisors, these were required on a weekly basis, and that was a big time commitment for trying to get work done. Not a big deal, but I think these could have been made monthly. - The member support / coaching team was paid pretty poorly. Just like with teachers, this is very taxing job, and I think that their hard work and mental stamina should have been compensated accordingly.

Conscientious leadership, fair pay, and great people to work with. Flexible schedule, and I've never worked with a bad manager at Guild. Overall - it's probably one of most well-rounded companies to work for these days.

at the moment, there isn't a lot of mobility opportunity to be promoted. I also wish the social culture was more active, but unfortunately it's tough when everyone is remote and dispersed.