Instructure Reviews

Pros

- CULTURE: as an employee I had a sense of ownership on whatever I was working on and was encouraged to ship and ship often. During the golden era product and engineering would work together to find ideal solutions. - Compensation: great benefits (while they lasted), competitive salary, fun company lunches. - Flexibility: unlimited PTO with a company who encouraged finding a work/life balance - Purpose: we helped students, teachers, and admins. - Ethics/transparency: "do you job"

Cons

Most cons are Dan Goldsmith era i.e. priming instructure for acquisition per board's instruction ThomaBravo: everything that was a pro, transformed into a con layoffs: I've never been laid off before, but by the time it was my turn it was very professional and was given a generous severance package given my time at INST. I did get laid off though, which is why this is a con ;) failed acquisition strategy to boost product offerings: we did not have a solid track record for integration other products into the larger canvas offerings. Most did not meet engineering muster. new products (studio, quizzes.next, gauge, canvas insights): the Product organization did not seem to have a clear goal as to what problems we were trying to solve with the new product offerings. Or if they did, the execution was poor. Making new products is difficult, especially ones that need to be at scale without being battle tested through organic growth.

Pros

Lots of smart people still around, interesting problems to be solved, good place to learn about running in AWS at a large scale

Cons

Repeated layoffs, obsession with hiring contractors and labor in cheap markets, benefits are getting worse, terrible communication

Pros

Many amazing coworkers that are will now be lifelong friends. To be fair, I did get paychecks.

Cons

TL;DR: Understaffed, overworked, underpaid. "Leadership" only cares about money. The lack of care for their employees borders on disdain. Employees are completely dispensable. Instructure has been going downhill over the last few years. That slow downhill turned into a 100 foot cliff with the combination of Thoma Bravo taking over and COVID-19/lockdown hitting. They have laid off hundreds of people across all departments this year, seemingly by looking at numbers on a spreadsheet. There was no regard to how valuable those people were to their departments and the company as a whole. I have no proof, but it sure looks like it was because many of those people made too much money. Because of this, the products have suffered. Some critical engineering teams are down to literally two people. Stock options were taken away with no replacement program. Insurance premiums used to be paid by the company, but that was taken away. In 2021, premiums will technically be reimbursed in the form of bonuses or HSA contributions. After 2021, those bonuses/HSA contributions will not continue. For people with families, this is effectively a $500+/month pay cut. Business went up 500+% because of COVID-19, but staffing in Support stayed the same. Full time L1 agents who have been lost to attrition have been replaced by part time agents, presumably so that TB doesn't have to provide benefits. This means that there are far fewer experienced L1 agents, which is a bad for the customer. It is also bad for the supervisors, L2s and other experienced agents who do not have the bandwidth to properly help/train/mentor all the new employees. Of course, this is also bad for those new employees who are not given the knowledge or tools necessary to do their job properly. Since staffing did not increase, the workload for L1s and L2s has skyrocketed. In the midst of fall start, turnaround times for many L1 tickets went from 1 hour (for the best SLA agreement) to a month. L1s have been on back-to-back calls and chats for almost a year with no lulls. There are no scheduled breaks or lunches, so everyone feels chained to their desks. This worked out okay when Instructure was smaller and there was some down time where people could get up and walk around for a minute. That doesn't work so well now and it feels barbaric. Management tells L1s to take plenty of breaks. They are also told they can take a 30 minute lunch if they clock out, but I've never personally seen that happen. Everyone is kind of shamed into being where they are supposed to be. I have personally felt guilty for going to the bathroom, even when it was urgent. When I started, the goal of a first contact resolution was the priority. Now, only ticket numbers and SLA matter (even though SLA times have largely been unachievable, due to the unsustainable volume). With more business and more inexperienced L1s, turnaround time for tickets escalated to L2 agents shot up to nearly 2 months. Imagine depending on a decent internet connection for your job. Then imagine your internet breaks and Xfinity doesn't get back to you for a MONTH or TWO. You would drop them without hesitation. "Leadership" has been blaming COVID-19 for the failure to scale to customer demand. That excuse is nonsense now that this has been going on for almost a year now. Historically, weathering busy semester starts has been tolerable since December, May, June and July used to be fairly slow. This year, that has not been the case at all. The decline in contact volume since August has been relatively small. There certainly isn't enough staffing to handle the current volume, so everyone, in all levels of Support, is completely burned out and demoralized. The workload for L2s is currently not even close to being caught up. It will carry over into the 2021 spring semester, where the nightmare will increase in intensity again. (I was going to say "...the nightmare will start all over again" but that would suggest that it stopped at some point.) Management thanks its employees with, "Thank you for all your hard work in these trying times." and a couple $5 Amazon gift cards. Nothing meaningful has been done to compensate the employees for the abuse Thoma Bravo has put them through over the last year. I do think that Support managers and (most) supervisors genuinely care about their employees. Unfortunately, they can only do so much. Their hands are tied by "leadership". Work/life balance no longer exists. This job has consumed me. My mental health has suffered. I don't normally suffer from depression, but I have been depressed for months. I had the first panic attack of my life. I'm self-medicating every day. My spouse misses the old me. Thoma Bravo truly is evil. Greed always wins and the little people always lose.

Pros

Steve Daly has been a significant hire as CEO. Employee trust is trending back up and he shows that he cares. The company has tightened its belt financially, but the leadership is functioning like it should to ensure the transition from public to private works brilliantly.

Cons

We've seen some cuts in benefits going into next year such as employee-contributions to health insurance which we never had to do before. 401Ks are still not good.