Yapstone Reviews

Pros

Fast pace, friendly. Executives are not perfect but not complacent-constantly striving to be better, in the industry and for employees. 401k matching, monthly activities to give back to the community, paid annual volunteer day, flexible time off. If you are ok with a start-up environment - I am - it is energizing and challenging. Never bored. Like being able to make a difference in processes and practice.... (growth is so fast it still feels like a start up) Exceptional peers. Love my job and co-workers.

Cons

Depending on your department, your managers/supervisors can be ok or great. Can be long hours at times if there is something big going on, if that's a "con."

Advice to Management

Set realistic goals for the company.

Pros

The company is going through some restructuring, however has huge upside potential in the market place segment. The new platform has come to life which is the fantastic. Not many competitors have such a capability. Good to have in your resume

Cons

HR is disaster. They committed to file perm application in 6 months of joining. It is been 16 to 20 months still they have not filed. Not a month or two delay which can be excused. By design they delay filing. This is a pattern I am not alone.

Advice to Management

Perm sponsor is very critical. If you cannot support through this HR, please do not commit. Please measure how is HR performing

Pros

The CEO and some people in the company truly believe that this company can be more than what it is right now.

Cons

At the moment, there is a lack of direction overall. After the mass layoffs, the office just looks like it's in a weird state of limbo. Even the mid-level managers have stopped, well, managing. There's no clear leadership. The VPs and the CTO are busy selling the product they built in the last 2 years. The product managers who are still there look like they are busy looking for their next career move. The used-to-be... great engineers are losing their faith and just stopped caring. So if you are like me who prefers structure and planning, then definitely this is not a place that you would want to be currently. I still don't know what the CEO (or the President) is up to these days... we rarely see him anyway.

Advice to Management

Bring back the structures. Tell us what to prioritize. If you can't, then let us know so we can focus on looking for new jobs. Going to work used to be exciting, now it's just a chore.

Pros

near the Bart, free dinners so you will stay late working, free breakfast on Wed

Cons

its like high school all over again. Mean Girls are now the Mean Boys that is all that has changed. It is a total throw anyone you can under the bus to cover yourself by all the Senior Manager and Executive team. It is no wonder they keep having lay offs. The product is a good product and the clients are lovely but the whole culture and politics make this a dreadful place to work. So many great people have... left as they simply couldn’t stand the favoritism that continues to go on. Either you are in the inter circle or you are out and fair game to be the escape goat for when one of the inter circle messes up. It’s a shame as Tom the co founder is smart and dynamic but he no longer drives the company culture the CTO and his crownies do.

Advice to Management

Grow some balls and have some integrity!

Pros

I was able to work with some of the most passionate, smart and fun individuals.

Cons

I was laid off from Yapstone and was gone to leave with my head held high. Layoffs happen, I saw the writing in the wall: huge employee exodus since December, management’s lack of focus and transparency and interest in its employees. I wasn’t going to leave a review and then something happened. I opened LinkedIn and saw that the HR department posted a picture of its “yapcares” program promoting a backpack donation... that the current employees participated in. The photo was complete with the HR team smiling and happy. Seriously. My. Mind. Is Blown. I was laid off a week before my child went back to school and having to spend $$$ getting my child ready for school without knowing where next paycheck would come from . It’s a slap in the face. It’s commonly know around the yapstone that HR cannot be trusted. Employees fear going to HR to report harassment. Moreover, the lay-off was so terribly handle. I understand that there is no good way to eliminate jobs but the company did it without compassion and continues to minimize the impact it had on its employees. Terrible

Advice to Management

The CEO and HR organization are the biggest challenge for this company. The CEO lacks a vision and the HR organization lack skills to keep employees at the company. Unless this changes, company is doomed.

Pros

There is nothing good here

Cons

Extremely political and very toxic

Advice to Management

You keep making the same bad decisions and let people who are not leaders lead. If you're not in the favor of those in charge, then you can guarantee you will be pushed out. Leadership makes decisions based on biased and self-serving advice, and don't even talk to the others impacted. My boss never even had a direct conversation with me, ever. HR is even worse, they let proven harassers stay in leadership... positions and those that were harassed get shown the door. You've gone through many of these "transitions." How many times do you have to let the good people go and the bad people stay to finally get it?

Pros

None I can think of

Cons

Product organization collapsed in late 2018, CTO took the charge of products. He is carrying the title but has NO product focus or product skills to turnaround the company in right direction. All they want is catch a big client and customize and standout from product companies like Stripe and Adyen saying we can give high-touch V/s low-touch by these companies. Company is focused on building new platform &... catching up with same feature set from old platform. This created 12+ months delay in building new features & sales got confused what to sell old platform or new and nothing really got converted and company is now financially struggling. The CEO/Co founder/ Chairmen is bullish on new platform/ tech in which he has invested & is not generating any revenue. They made such a decision and now with no future revenue source layoff was expected. The worst thing was everyone got impacted but people who made this decision did not. The CTO runs nepotism by bringing his own team of VPs, Directors and Managers on engineering side and none of their jobs were impacted. Now the ratio is easily 2:1 i.e. on 4 engineers probably there are 2 managers.

Advice to Management

Don't hire product manager if you don't have product focus, get a business analyst or contractors and have them work with engineering teams who are doing sales and have them write requirements that you care about.

Pros

Commute and great team members

Cons

Below pay scale for Bay Area

Advice to Management

I thought this would be the perfect company for me to grow with, bringing my current knowledge and share like Knights of the Round Table and help the company grow. My thought process was quickly interrupted by personal roadblocks in management and other staff. This created the inability for me to grow professionally or present my value to your company. As it stands, there is not an Operations Manager in WC. The... importance of that position is for them to manage day-to-day Operations throughout the company and make sure the company stays on track. Unfortunately, each department runs Yapstone how they see best fits at that time. I believe, the lack of this role is why there’s no structure, policy documents are incomplete and for heaven sakes, create company values. I thought this was one of the many things required in a business plan. I was shocked to hear at an all hands meeting this did not exist. An exodus of seasoned staff (3+ yrs), this is a cause for alarm. The main reason this is so bothersome is because nothing is written down properly (most of the information is in their heads and now they’re gone). As the old saying goes, an oral contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Unwritten rules undermine your business, it’s costly and embarrassing. I fault Senior Executive Staff for not laying down the law. In response to a previous review regarding “Their biggest client leaving.” I am disturbed by the response from Senior Staff that states” We prefer to address employee concerns …rather than social media” and type a lengthy rebuttal, seems counterproductive. How does this response look to a potential employee? What does that response say about the Yapstone brand? It validates the negative reviews with defensive undertones and hints of emotion. How do you fix this? I suggest hiring a consultant immediately. Have them individually interview with all remaining staff (including Senior Management), to understand the strengths of your people and how they can grow Yapstone to be better aligned for the future. Offer Tom Talks (Tom’s Soup, Tom’s Tom Club whatever name you can find) every quarter you (Tom) and 5 Yapstone staffers have open forum (face to face). For this to be effective, it must be different individuals each time without HR or SR Management, if you want real feedback and construct something with it. This may cut down on some of your Glassdoor reviews (People are using this platform to be heard). Q2 is ending, now is the time to enforce. Update information online regarding number of employees Pitchbook reflects 101-200 while Crunchbase shows 251-500 and BBB 310, consistency across the board is key. I understand the company is private but, while websites containing the company profile are being updated include 2018-year earnings, this can be a big deal for current and potential employees, possible brand booster.