LendUp Employee Reviews about "mission"

Pros

Free lunch Location right next to BART

Cons

Leadership is a joke. They claim to be mission driven but they definitely aren’t and it’s clear once you’re there. People Op’s will find some reason to hate you.

Pros

I work with some of the brightest, friendliest, most passionate people. Mission alignment and company goals are baked into everything we do.

Cons

Agreed with what another reviewer said here. Sometimes the snacks are too healthy. Would be nice to get more flavorful, saltier snacks into the mix here.

Pros

LendUp is a one of a kind company. It's a company with strong values and an ambitious mission, all while being for-profit and lead by some of the industries best leaders. In my time here, everyone I've come across is laser focused individuals who care about the customers we're working for, love the financial technology space, and use their amazing technical and relationship skills to build this company. Everyone is here because they want to be part of this mission to totally change the payday lending space. On the topic of leadership, our team is very involved in the ground operations and they are always eager to answer any questions we have about the future of our business. They're very level headed, smart, and compassionate leaders that are in it for the long haul. They want to build a business that is not only innovative but also will last. This is a company you want to work for.

Cons

Hours can get long and we are in a highly regulated industry, which can cause us to move a bit slower than we may want.

Pros

LendUp Account Management was certainly a learning process. I learned a lot about what I do like and don't like in a job and in management. I have been thoroughly impressed by the employees who care about the mission and truly want to help sub-prime borrowers. There was an intelligent, awesome group of people on the Customer Insights team that made coming to work enjoyable--I made some lifelong friends. LendUp does an inexplicably good job at hiring very smart, over-qualified people. In-office happy hours on Fridays also garnered a sense of camaraderie. Great office location.

Cons

LendUp did a great job of cultivating a good, fun, healthy, etc. culture when we were small (<110), but as the company grew, culture did not pivot well. This was especially true on the "Customer Insights" team when they tricked us into becoming a call center. Expectations were not set (although claimed they were later down the road). I felt like a hamster on the wheel or a horse with the carrot on a stick that is unattainable. I was definitely willing to work hard for that next step on the ladder, as were most of my peers. It was clear they were incentivizing people to make the calls needed by promising promotions/to move you to a different team but would never actually promote/move people out of the team because they needed people in their call center. "Management" (I use the term to mean the disparaging few, not all) would constantly pick at you at make you feel worthless if you couldn't keep up with the expected call numbers every single hour of the day (why did Person X make 110 calls today; he usually makes 150). At times, I felt it was a toxic working environment--from the micromanagement to the asinine gossip to making one feel guilty to stay at home when truly sick, etc. My intelligence as well as my peers' was not put to best use. Furthermore, in terms of management, it also seemed ridiculous and a complete waste of very capable people who should be doing other things than counting the number of calls I and my peers make every minute of the day.

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

Neat product and mission. Services a consumer group that is often ignored.

Cons

Way too much focus on mission statements, core values, lunch, happy hours. Very little focus on business. Extremely high turnover. There is no institutional knowledge because every one is new.

Pros

-The San Francisco team is dynamic and enthusiastic about the social mission and about hard work. -There is opportunity for honest and communicative dialogue between you and your supervisors. -Opportunity to create additional projects for yourself. -Quick growth in the Richmond office (if working for a big company is what you are looking for). -Great health insurance benefits.

Cons

-The Richmond office culture is not developing to mirror the San Francisco culture. Many people are fresh out of college and do not take themselves or the role seriously. Immature, unrefined, and potentially offensive sentiments will be heard nearly every day. - The Richmond office will only ever be a call center. There may be opportunity for vertical growth, but only in customer service roles. -Position is hourly, not salaried. -Catered lunch in theory is awesome, but in practice it is often unhealthy and the quantity ordered isn't enough to feed everyone in the office.

Pros

•mission is top notch •heavy volume of calls teaches you how to be more confident on the phones •set schedule allows for a good work/life balance

Cons

•work is extremely taxing despite it just being a traditional 9-5 •since this company is in the payday lending space the customers you are dealing with are generally financially stressed, which can make for grueling day to day •calling a spade a spade this is essentially is a call-center position and the company needs to be more transparent on this (P.S. you are not managing accounts) •need to stream line daily process to mitigate attrition--perhaps make this a 3 day a week 10 hour a day position •company does not layout a path towards promotion

Pros

- Strong mission: providing better financial products for sub-prime borrowers - Broadly high quality people across departments - Friendly personalities: don't really encounter egos here - Dog friendly office - Good work/life balance

Cons

- Most talented employees are leaving, for various reasons, but one general impression is that LendUp's has less opportunity to make big innovations. - Pay, at least in some departments, is below industry average - Career growth is not obvious; don't see tons of internal promotions - Noisy office

Pros

LendUp brings technological innovation to an industry that desperately needs it. The company's socially responsible mission to help customers build their credit is honest and easy for employees to get behind. The fast-paced work environment has been refreshing and I enjoy the constant challenges we face while introducing a new product into the online lending industry.

Cons

Since the company is growing so quickly, expectations of employees are very high. You will be surrounded by extremely hard-working people who care about the product. This is not a bad thing unless you are not prepared to work for a company like this, so keep this in mind if applying to work here.