What are pay increases like at Toptal?

Pros

Smart and driven coworkers Flexibility to work anywhere and remote

Cons

Clear culture of fear of the CEO causing politics and people disappearing unexpectedly Employee happiness surveys are not anonymous so results are biased Raises are capped at percentage of salary

Pros

- Good for people that have just started their careers - Remote, but who isn't remote nowadays

Cons

- Leadership So let's start here. I'm not going to waste too much time on the CEO. Lots of horror stories about him online. One thing to note is that he has a nickname "psycho" among the execs in the industry which is actually quite funny. The self-proclaimed "genius" leads the self-proclaimed "greatest talent company in the world" . But enough about the guy who fires people on a whim, openly threatens his employees, condones racism and sexism and calls people retards on team calls with 500+ attendees. The People Operations team is the biggest reason why Toptal has so many bad reviews and why it's such a terrible place to be at. What stands out about that team is its leadership and how they fabricate stories about other people, their sex lives, gossips openly in team calls, and shares personal and private information that were shared with them, only to make them look bad. They've proven time and time again that they can't be trusted, that the sole purpose of this team is to eliminate any threat from within at any sign of trouble no matter the cost. A whole lot of nepotism happens there as friends and acquaintances get hired regularly and are tasked them to run errands, seemingly wanting to help people, but really wanting to remove anyone who is in the slightest way unhappy. People that have built the place that it is today have been backstabbed, sabotaged and removed by them. - Culture Reeeeaaallly doesn't exist. It's great when things are great, but at first sign of issues, whether internally, or externally -- people get thrown under a bus at first chance. The culture isn't terrible everywhere, there are smaller teams that have different dynamics which helps, but cross-team collaboration is non-existent 90% of the time. Toptal cares about revenue, and definitely not about it's employees. What's funny here is that they've implemented a "cultural interview" as a step in every interview process, and it's hilarious that some of the people that are "culture ambassadors" don't know a thing about the company history, and if you ask them questions about bad reviews here -- they will of course blame the people that posted them, and label them as traitors, spineless dirtbags that have nothing better to do, than being jealous. You see, Toptal can't be wrong in anything. =D If you are this far in the interview process, and you get turned down, trust me -- You've just exhibited traits that make you a normal person, so anyone who wants to know how they fare on the "psycho-meter", they should try this out. By the way, we have a chat for culture ambassadors and it's hilarious to see how much they like praising each other and pat each other on the back. Seems like group therapy more than anything else. As an example of how screwed up this company is, they refused to comment or issue a statement (lost a couple of employees because of this) on the BLM movement. And while they're within rights to do so, it's the reasons why they refused to do it that are terrible, and apparently, that's because they might upset some larger (Fortune 50) clients and lose business (since decision makers are white). A word on leaving Toptal? You signed your death penalty. Prepare to get threatened, asked weird questions and reasons for leaving. Prepare to get terminated from Slack immediately in case you wanted to say BYE to people. - Growth I heard the Toptal didn't have career paths designed for most of the organization for years. People worked in the same roles for ages, without promotion, bonuses or raises. That hasn't changed much because if you do get promoted, the raise is barely noticeable, but, you get a lot more responsibility in your role, and more things that you can get fired for. - Compensation You'll probably climb the Himalayas before you get a raise or a bonus here. At least it rarely happened in 2020 and it slightly improved as decent talented people started leaving. The only people that do get it are those in leadership positions where their comp is attached to the "$1B goal by end of 2022". As mentioned, when people started leaving, they realized they might lose those that they have trained for months, and started throwing money at them. Mentioning you're considering leaving is the only way to get paid more. - Diversity and inclusion People are neither trained nor aware of what these terms mean. Oh yeah, and take a look at the leadership roles, that should tell you how diverse this company is. - Strategy & Mission Statement " Let's get to $1B. " You see, this company used to care about the "talent" around the world, but it no longer does. They've made some really good hires in leadership that could get them there, but they also made some poor choices as well. And while it's OK to have great growth goals, it should not come at the expense of its talent. Talent frequently gets the short end of the stick, when working with clients, and if clients complain and threaten to take it public, the talent ends up not getting paid, threatened with expulsion if they complain etc. - Reviews Online Most of the reviews here are posted by people that have been at the company less than a month. What Toptal did is hilarious, given they knew Glassdoor is like cancer, and it will continue to spread the more people leave. They included swag as part of the interview process, and made it necessary for people to post about it on social media on how great the company is. They also often run NPS surveys and brag how the score is very high. That is very much true except that there's fear of retaliation and termination if you score as anything less than 8 because every concern, and conversation you have about anything will result in you being blamed for how you feel. Again, Toptal can do no wrong. And people were bullied, harassed and ultimately fired for feeling anything but GREAT at the GREATEST TALENT COMPANY IN THE WORLD. Read the reviews on other sites, and you'll notice a very odd pattern. A massive amount of 5 Stars (barely any 2 - 3 - 4) and then a considerable amount of 1 Star reviews. Seems selective, doesn't it? - Business Model There is really not much "genius" here. We vet talent, and it's not that difficult. This is obviously visible from the slow growth, and poor retention from clients since quality has gone down. Our proprietary platform is a decent tool, but probably obsolete and too complicated for what it was designed. We hear Taso talk about it as it was invented to cure cancer, but it's really a bunch of legacy code that nobody can't touch because it would stop working. On the flipside though, Toptal is really not afraid to charge clients exorbitant rates. There's an insane markup to the rates engineers ask for. For an example, an engineer would ask $25/hr and Toptal would mark it up to $80/hr while they mark it up even more for larger clients (they would add in excess of $100+ per hour). We're pricing ourselves out, but I guess getting to $1B justifies the price. Oh yeah, good luck managing our talent and being responsible for failures. Toptal will only ever admit anything if you take it to court! =D

Advice to Management

Get rid of the people team

Pros

Mostly inbound work, a lot of the system is automated, not a lot of outbound reach outs required, you work with existing clients and your goals are to upsell.

Cons

No equity options, a slight increase in salary after a promotion, new sales people get bigger base salaries than long-standing employees.

Advice to Management

Motivation to continue at Toptal was low and I did not have a lot of options to advance my career or learn something new.

Pros

Flexible opportunities across many domains Higher pay per hour Great talent support internally Great platform UI

Cons

Engagement may actually bill LESS than what it's scoped for Engagement can end abruptly (that's the point of hiring contractors!) You are expected to be a SME right from the beginning Pay is staggered, you will only begin to see an increase in pay after you put in 2 weeks of increased hours, and another 2-3 weeks for payment to clear. So 4-5 weeks in total. Contract work means you can't use this as a reliable source of income to apply for mortgage.

Advice to Management

More internal training opportunities, lunch and learns, advancements, keep the axe sharp.

Pros

- Reasonable workload - Great collaboration between teams overall - Pay is good, although raises can be frozen/delayed - Not too much politics because of the remote environment

Cons

- Leadership members are completely scared of the CEO which causes them to not take accountability for anything. They are basically walking on eggshells most of the time and pushing responsibilities between one another to not have to face the CEO. This causes terrible micromanagement within the teams. - Although workload is reasonable, the micromanagement mentioned above makes some of the projects very painful to work on. - The Marketing department has been affected by multiple structural changes and that messes up real bad with processes. Very few people seem aware of what's the best course of events for projects and there often is way too many cooks in the kitchen. - Few growth opportunities

Advice to Management

- Reinforce leadership courage and ownership - Walk the talk: if trust is one of the company' values, then the CEO should trust the leaders under him - Instaure clear processes

Pros

- Clients that need a problem solved and have the right budget to do so - No cheap clients, no lowballing, you get people that respect the work you do - A constant stream of jobs coming in - both long-term and short-term, so it fits every single profile - The ability to earn more as you complete jobs and raise your rate - Toptal's support team - they are there every step of the way and really help out

Cons

- No cons so far at all

Advice to Management

Keep up the good work

Pros

- good money from the start - a lot of people that know their stuff

Cons

- if you did not get money at the start, forget the raise - don't get near CEO - some PMs create toxic culture and they are praised for it - politics - some people are clearly lazy and they get away with it because of being friends with some others

Pros

You will be lured in by an above average salary, "unlimited vacation" that is actually limited, and the opportunity to work for "The Greatest Talent Company in the World."

Cons

I'm sorry to say that this is another one of those privately owned, medium-sized companies that is doomed to fail due to its "Elon Musk at Twitter"-style of senior management by its CEO, Taso Du Val. Despite his early success in launching this talent agency's platform, Taso has cultivated a culture of negativity and fear, fueled by his paranoia, complete lack of trust in his own employees, and sheer greed. Coming from a much larger, very well run company, my experience after being lured away by Toptal was a shock to the system. After eight 1:1 interviews, an extensive background check, and completing an extremely intense screening assignment, I felt honored to join a company that touts its "rigorous screening process" to vet the talent that they place for their clients. The CEO was on the invite list for nearly every Zoom meeting that I attended, each of which was recorded for him to review at his leisure. In a post-pandemic world I appreciate people who turn their cameras on so I can see my colleagues, but I completely respect those who don't. It's a personal choice. At Toptal, though, almost everyone has their camera on at all times. That is, except for Taso, who will randomly join calls in a quasi-stealth mode by somehow appearing at the very bottom of the video attendee list without warning. Essentially, he is ALWAYS watching. As a result, the 1000+ employees work day-to-day on edge, hoping/praying that Taso isn't listening in and ready to pounce. When he does, heads roll. Every discussion and every decision begins and ends with WWTT (What Would Taso Think). One day you might have a meaningful discussion with a colleague that gives you hope that some progress can be made. The next, you send that same person a Slack message, only to learn that their account has been deactivated with no explanation. And, that's really the long and short of it. People are let go with no explanation, acknowledgement, and virtually no severance. They're just gone and the revolving door continues to spin in turbo mode. The bottom line is that Taso could not care less about his employees. It's very apparent that he cares only about himself. There are so many other tell-tale signs of this bad company that I could warn you about. But, I hope this is enough. My salary increase was 42% to come here, and it was not worth it. Don't do it. Nuff said.

Advice to Management

Taso, we never got to meet. I honestly wish you and your company success. However, CEO and micro-manager cannot exist in the same sentence with success. You go to great lengths to hire the "top 3%" of talent, not only for your clients, but your company as well. Trust them to do their jobs and you will succeed. Focus on running your company and not reading and approving every outbound ABM campaign, social media, blog post, or approval process that your employees are putting in place to make you successful. They're already scared enough of you. I sincerely hope you don't take any drastic measures should your company happen to fail, because apparently it seems to be heading that way. Good luck on your quest for the right side of history.

Pros

High pay, unlimited PTO, reimbursement policies and opportunity to work on big projects along lots of smart people. Culture inside the teams themselves was great, in contrast to what happens across the company as whole.

Cons

Work pressure is high and people work after working hours, even after midnight to deliver projects. There are too much attributions for engineers. Your daily work as an engineer involves: the expertise you were hired for + the stack out of your expertise (AKA everyone is expected to be fullstack regardless of their role) + frequent hotfixes + reviewing a massive quantity of PRs (your team's and external teams) + dealing with demands from people in other teams and engaging on discussions across lots of Slack channels + leadership skills. There is a rating system for your competency called TopSteps, which had rates going from "below expectations" to "blowing away expectations". Lately they changed the base rating from "meeting expectations" to "working towards expectations" because "everyone has something to improve". Think of a motivational culture. Transparency was lacking a lot lately too. They made us think that layoffs were unlikely and froze raises "to avoid them". Then they called a meeting to talk about "team restructuring", merging some teams, which seemed unreasonable. It all made sense afterwards, when the layoffs happened. Freezing raises to pay less on the compensation for laid-off people, merging teams because every team would be a lot smaller. Layoffs were brutal. Not all people had the chance to understand what was happening. It was announced over a 10 minutes meeting. People who couldn't attend that had to ask ex-teammates privately to get any clue of what would happen next. Some managers didn't know their engineers were fired until moments after it happened.

Advice to Management

Try harder to follow the culture you sell. Your "positive behavior" rating is well below expectations.

Pros

Work at home and have flexible time

Cons

Too much competition and result in less pay.