Lever Reviews

Pros

- I was fortunate to work with some truly talented, intelligent, and highly motivated co-workers - The product is the best hiring software on the market. Always fun to work at a company with a great product

Cons

- In just a year at Lever, the company went through several "restructurings" aka layoffs. Despite having a good product, the business has not been run particularly well - The COVID layoff was very poorly handled. No transparency, everyone was immediately cut off from each other, follow-up information was extremely lacking. It was done with little-to-no empathy. There's no "good" way to handle a layoff, but for a company that purports to care about its employees, this was extremely disappointing - The company culture felt fake. The company "values" were very surface-level - I was subject to multiple experiences of management being extremely disparaging toward myself and other subordinates. I was not the only one who experienced this. Managers who were genuine and kind were let go, while managers who were borderline abusive and underperforming remain

Pros

-The people at Lever are wonderful. There aren't a lot of egos and everyone is really approachable and friendly. -My team is awesome - everyone is really smart and good at their job. It makes work so much more fun, when you have a good team. -Lever really cares about diversity and it shows. While there are no doubt areas of improvement, the investment makes me confident that we'll get there. -The transparency from leadership through this crisis has been admirable. I feel like I know where we stand and I understand where we are as a business. -There is a focus on working cross-functionally which makes us a more cohesive team and means that we can accomplish more.

Cons

-COVID has hit Lever really hard and we're still navigating through that, which is tough. However, I have a lot of confidence that we will make it though. -Startups come with a lot of ambiguity and change. This isn't unique to Lever, but we're also not immune to it. You have to thrive in this kind of environment to be happy and successful at Lever.

Pros

Lever is hands-down the best company that I've ever been a part of. Lever is such a special place that truly invests in its people (and their respective career growth). Leadership at all levels is the best I've seen at any company I've worked ever for. One of Lever's core values is Cross-Functional Empathy, and this is something that you can just feel every day you walk into the office. People here genuinely care and want the best for each other -- There's no sense of a "dog-eat-dog" environment which is unfortunately pretty common at a lot of Bay Area tech companies. Just as great as the SF office is Lever's newest office in Toronto. The relationship between the two offices, although in two very different places in the world, is so impressive to watch grow. There's transparency, collaboration and a real energy that brings the best out of all Leveroos, and really makes it feel like 1 team, 1 dream. The all-hands meetings delivered by our CEO, Sarah, are so captivating and motivating --- and there's a real sense of transparency from the top-down.

Cons

There was some shifting/merging of a couple of teams in mid-2019 that put a few folks/teams in a tough position and asked them to work in a different role than they were hired for. This had a little bit of a hit on morale for a few months, but the company has come much stronger because of it -- and I believe in a much better position to succeed and continue our growth upmarket. Silverlining: E-Staff has done a really good job of calling out this shift, explaining the why, and making the reasons clear to the rest of the org. They didn't ignore the elephant in the room.

Pros

- The company takes a genuinely vision-driven approach to the product. It's exciting to work on a team redefining how enterprise SAAS products can be built. - We don't see incredibly high standards for our work and a culture of respect and inclusion as a dichotomy. We are deeply committed to both. - The organization and product are both positioned to accelerate and scale rapidly, and we're building for growth in a sustainable way. - The people are genuinely some of the best you can find in tech. There's a real sense of humor. We take our work and product seriously, but don't have a culture of taking ourselves too seriously. - The team, including our execs, care about building a great product and a great company.

Cons

- Not many companies go through the stages of growth Lever is experiencing, and like any other organization in our position we're constantly encountering growing pains. They're a symptom of doing well, but to be successful here you have to enthusiastically embrace the challenge. - Our internal communication can be inconsistent.

Pros

I've been at Lever now for 8+ months, and have thoroughly enjoyed my experience. I have worked for extensive periods of time at other very successful companies, and I can say first hand, Lever has what it takes to win - in the market place and with its employees. I have learned in my time here that the Leaders here are passionate about our market opportunity and strategy to win it, and have the will to make the difficult decisions to help a company go from one hyper-growth phase, and evolve in order to reach the next one. Very few start-up SaaS companies reach a certain $ARR milestone to even call itself a viable, long term player in its space. Lever has most certainly blasted through some of those early milestones and is within reach of the next set of big ones in the very near term. But as any company that goes through growth experiences, it's unlikely you reach your future milestones without changing how you operate in certain pockets of the business - to be agile and willing to adapt/evolve to more complex customer (and future customer) needs and how to support them in new and modern ways to meet them where they are in their growth and help them anticipate what they need most to be successful. Lever has made those changes - and for the better - and as a result, is on a terrific path to scaling with its existing and new customers.

Cons

Wish we were hiring even faster in areas of growth. We have a strong/aggressive hiring plan as-is, given we recently completed our 2020 plan and well underway already. But given the large and growing market opportunity in front of us, I can't wait for us to be able to double the size of the team and keep building on the current momentum in several of our core go-to-market segments.

Pros

The sales culture and Leadership is by far the best I’ve worked with in years. We are at an inflection point and the entire company is coming together to build something truly special. We’re still a startup and have that “roll up your sleeves” mindset to just get stuff done and make our mark. AND we have adults in the room ;-) I’m really excited about our future and more importantly the people I get to make it with. While no company is perfect, there’s no place I’d rather be right now than Lever.

Cons

We made some strategic mistakes last year that we have remedied and are looking to rebuild a few key functions so things might be a bit bumpy in the short term.