Illuminate Education Reviews

Pros

Illuminate Education is a great place to work! It is an open collaborative environment. They do a great job listen to their employees and their ideas as to how to scale the company and the products. -Culture is relaxed, casual and open - Flexible schedule and work environment -Have remote opportunities available

Cons

I don't have anything at this time

Pros

hmm... I'll get back to you once I can think of one

Cons

I've worked at some disorganized places that left me feeling frustrated and exhausted, but at least coworkers were there as supports and in the trenches with you getting the work done. Do not expect that kind of camaraderie at Illuminate. You are on an island of your own. This company went through a mega-merger nearly 2 years ago and nothing is merged, it still individually companies under a large Illuminate umbrella. People who worked for one of the original companies before the merger will label you an outsider and assume you cannot do anything correctly. There is such a reliance on a few people who worked for the original companies prior to the merger they cannot delegate work to new hires. There is also no trust in new hires to do the work themselves. People who are praised here are workaholics who spend their evenings and weekends and holidays and PTO logging into their email to finish work. That is what is celebrated. There is no expectation of a work/life balance. Employees who are NOT managers are given supervisory work without communication to those who would be working under them - having a review completed by someone who is NOT your manager is insulting. Being told that you need to take ownership of a project when the person who should be handing the work off to you is a control freak who make it impossible to do so is degrading. It's like folks here never learned to communicate kindly to one another - you always need to look behind you to see who is about to throw you under the bus. This company is going to fail if they don't realize they need to break up the original company employees because they will never fully integrate otherwise.

Pros

This was such an amazing company to work for at one time. Former educators made up much of the workforce. We cared deeply for our clients and understood the struggles that educators face.

Cons

So many to list! Greedy, money hungry people are running this company. They don't care about children or educators. I am guessing they are losing clients by the dozens due to the way they run this company. I am sure they are saying that they can help with remote learning, despite having very little to help with this. It won't stop them from lying though to get money from school districts.

Pros

Illuminate is a company full of motivated people

Cons

I have no cons at this time.

Pros

- The outstanding colleagues (some of whom I would consider family) that haven't been fired, laid off or quit out of frustration - Flexibility for remote work - Product, at least the ones that are still actively supported

Cons

If you're thinking of working here, do yourself a favor and filter these reviews by Date. You'll notice exactly what the cons are. Here's my summary: - Executive leadership lacks company vision/goals, transparency, and compassion. It's truly sad to see a company that was steeped in employee culture, care for ALL clients, and dedicated mission navigated off a cliff. - The above listed cons can be further broken down. Let's start with company vision/goals. There is a lack of what the "big idea" is, other than making profit. - Lack of company culture. Frankly, I'm quite surprised at how quickly it went from a supportive and employee-centric environment to a rigid hierarchy dictating what/when/how to perform our job responsibilities. - I didn't go to business school but understand that layoffs are a sad reality of mergers. But laying off folks with deep product knowledge and training experience, prior to strategic time(s) of the year is downright irresponsible. This decision has impacted clients and ultimately, the students (our most important clients, in my opinion). The con is a client-facing team that no longer have end to end knowledge of products.

Pros

- Remote work - decent pay and benefits - still has PTOs (when they are approved) - Decent team to work with

Cons

Lots of cons where do I start: - No communication between the different teams - Bad managers making you duplicate work constantly - Getting thrown under the bus when leadership fails - No backfill for past engineers. Instead of replacing people that have left, others inherit the workload. As a result, everybody is overworked and stressed. - Tech debt is through the roof. Instead of fixing the bad infrastructure, let's add more features and increase the load. We need money. - Constantly stressing over cost (poor leadership planning). - There are 2 state as an engineer at illuminate: fire & pause. We're told that we need to get this thing done right now, and forget your life or your family. Then, we're told, it's not urgent anymore to wait until leaders have made further decisions. My current manager is a bully who does not take blame for anything. Instead, he finds ways to make you do the work, and when things do not go according to plan, he throws you under the bus. We are constantly doing the same work over and over again, because of his poor leadership style. He tries to get you to work on your paid holidays, but then pretend that he never once asked you to do that. There is no papertrail to prove your point, so he gets away with it. He tells you that you cannot take vacations on specific months (due to high testing season), but refuses to put that in writing. Who wants to work for a manager that you cannot trust. You never know which version of him you're going to get, as a result, you're constantly worried when coming to work. He created a very hostile environment for everybody. He is not flexible for you, but demands it of you.