LendUp Engineering Reviews

Pros

Given my last review was voted "most helpful", I wanted to update it after ~1 year at the company for both insiders and potential candidates to get a more transparent look at what's changed since we are a company that is going through rapid change. 1) Still engineering/data driven. This means we focus on building and investing in technology first. There is a reason why we are scaling orders of magnitudes better than big banks! Had a recent hackathon for the first time and talented folks across departments built some really things - servicing tool written in purescript, real-time chat bot, static analysis tools, etc. 2) Our social mission is very clearly the top priority and last say in decision-making. It is really easy to see the passion some of my coworkers have for making a difference in our customers' financial lives. It is personally incredibly rewarding to be working for a company that is making such a huge difference. In 2016, we saved customers an estimated $18.3m dollars (this study is available on our blog) and raised their credit scores by a significant amount. We can't save our customers that much without our business is doing well- we are able to undercut and provide better services than existing lenders, and we choose to do so 3) Transparency- It's clear to me that the executive team and management places a big emphasis on gathering feedback and listening to employees concerns. If you read some our more recent reviews, you may be concerned but Sasha and Jake have addressed and discussed every single one multiple times (will elaborate on this more in the con section) 4) Comp/benefits are getting bumped up as we get more funding! We are more at the median level now but to be more competitive hiring, we should be in the top quartile. 5) Unlimited vacation - people are skeptical of this but it's real and people take advantage of it! Most people I see take the equivalent of a week off per quarter. 6) Diversity and inclusion. The people here really care about diversity and inclusion because they are central to our mission - we are trying to bring in a (huge) group of people that is currently excluded by our financial system. This has led to redefining our company values, renaming all conference rooms after influential women/POC, formation of a Black Lives Matter book club, and employee-initiated volunteering. 7) There has been recent bad press from the CFPB ruling but if you read what the violations actually were, it is amazing we have so few and minor mistakes in such a heavily regulated and scrutinized industry (most of the violations were failure to display certain text disclosures back when LendUp was super young). Heck, even TransUnion and Equifax got slapped with a fine recently and their compliance/legal departments are probably bigger than our whole company. This is no excuse but I can say with integrity that we've never made a product decision that hurts the customer.

Cons

Focus on eng/data means other departments often get overlooked or left behind. This is a general problem in tech, not just at LendUp. Specifically, most of the recent negative reviews have been from folks leaving from our Customer Insights/Account Servicing department. This is incredibly unfortunate- as someone who has worked closely with many of them on a day to day basis I know how valuable their product expertise is. From talking to some insiders, the gist of what happened is we hired an incredibly bright, excited (and overqualified) team at low pay in exchange for career opportunity. The day to day job is mostly account servicing and handling customer calls and through this you get valuable exposure to our users and the product. I've seen many of our CI agents get promoted and moved around into different teams with paths to become data analysts or work in product. There is a LOT of career growth opportunity here but not everyone gets this same opportunity because at the end of the day we still need folks to answer calls and there are a limited number of internal positions open. The result has been high turnover on this team and a decision to outsource most of our servicing to Richmond, VA where it is much cheaper to hire. I still believe the future is bright for the company but it's unfortunate we lost some good people from CI (most left before a year) who left disgruntled and bitter at management.

Pros

LendUp is making products for the US underbanked. What people don't realize is that we're using technology to impact a decades old predatory market. We are using modern distributed machine learning techniques to do so. The technical challenges are plentiful and range from data processing challenges to building loan systems ground up. The team here is phenomenal. What makes it so unique is really the focus on doing good for the customer that you see in every employee. Because of that you see end to end product decisions that factor in the customer's best interests and leaves them in a position of better credit understanding and financial health. One thing that stands out to me is the focus on growth in key areas. The entire company aligns against 3 key goals and this keeps us moving forward positively.

Cons

We're growing rapidly and with that comes workload challenges and technical debt. Fortunately the latter is addressed regularly and the leadership is investing in growing the team to combat workload. Team structure, as with most startups, is lacking. Given we're over 100 people now it may be time to start thinking about more structure

Pros

I didn't know much about the cost and access issues for under banked people, or the 'credit invisibles', before I started at LendUp. Now that I am here and I know how the existing companies in this space treat customers I feel a lot of urgency to grow our business and help more customers build their credit and improve their financial options. The social mission provides daily motivation and is at the front of mind for the entire team. Check out the company values on the careers page, they really are reflected in the day to day rhythm at Lendup. At a personal level, it is a stimulating and rewarding experience to work with such a talented team. The product is evolving so fast, and our customer base is growing even faster. The motivation and creativity from the engineering team to keep up with those demands makes every day dynamic and new. All the perks of catered lunch, easy access to BART/transit, great office space, happy hours, etc are great because they keep us feeling good and focused on building new tech.

Cons

The industry we are trying to change has a lot of stigma, most of it well deserved. It can be challenging to quickly articulate to friends and family the change we are trying to make and how we are different. This highlights the importance of our social mission, but it can be frustrating.

Pros

Great people, great mission, good culture

Cons

High pressure, too many on call pager duties

Pros

The company is sincere in its social mission. This is what attracted me in the first place, and it is not just lip service. They are trying to take a mature approach to affect systemic change in a broken system. This is entrepreneurial problem solving at its finest, and everyone here is motivated and is seriously competent. Also, the executive team seem not only to really know their stuff, they are also very down to earth and approachable.

Cons

Like any startup with this pace of growth, they risk losing the essence of what makes this a great place to work. This is not a con per se, just as everything splits and duplicates, mutations in the culture have the potential to form. But so far this has not been an issue.

Pros

Great Leadership and Engineering team. The management has a clear goal of what they want to achieve. Everyone values the mission of socially responsible lending and this is the core of everything that is built at this company. Everyone truly believes in making a difference and our very passionate about the work that is being done. Things proceed very fast here with a lot of importance given to iterative development process. Fail fast(?) and try again. Most of the business is data driven and is an exciting place to be for a data engineer/ data scientist. Amazing culture here. Happy hours / Karaoke nights are a lot of fun.

Cons

Not many here. Will update if something changes when the company grows.

Pros

1. Great Mission: It feels amazing knowing that the work I'm doing is making a real impact and helping people that usually have no where else to turn 2. Smart & Driven Coworkers: As a junior engineer its awesome knowing that I'm working with and learning from some of the smartest people around 3. Awesome culture: While working here you feel a strong sense of ownership and are encouraged to speak your mind or fix anything that you feel is broken. I've never felt more free at any other company 4. Exciting: We are always trying to move quickly and taking on new and exciting projects. As a junior engineer this is a big plus since I am never bored! 5. Fun: Everyone is always smiling and very friendly. Friday happy hours are really fun

Cons

I wish I could drive my car into work. But thats the price you pay for working in the city!

Pros

* Founder and early employees are all veterans of the tech & finance industry. * Strong emphasis on values and building a socially responsible company. * Engineering team is very senior providing a great learning environment. * LendUp is solving some very challenging problems in novel ways. Engineers coming on board are exposed to a lot of different domains and technologies.

Cons

* Don't apply if you're not into working hard. We're not talking regular twelve hours days, but it's no 9 to 5. * Snack selection can get a bit too healthy at times.

Pros

The team here is top-notch, and the work environment is great. There’s a lot of competence and mutual respect throughout the team. Everyone is a genuinely nice person, so it's a friendly place. There's also an impressively reasonable work/life balance.

Cons

The pay is reasonable, but lower than you'd get at a large company like Google or Facebook. Also, while you're at the office, you'll be working pretty hard; everyone maintains a fairly intense focus throughout the day.

Pros

Offer free lunch and snacks; get paid on-time, unlimited paid vacation (require manager approval)

Cons

- Business and services had been in survival mode since all the experienced tech guys and founders were gone after the split of the credit card business - Lack of transparence and trust in company culture. No document or whatsoever of driving business requirement to technical requirement and planning. Everything is in ad hoc mode. - Developers are suffering forever for the poor architecture design - There is no real employees appreciation for their good work - Toilet is flooding every other day and there is poop on the floor