This place is toxic and bad beyond what words can describe. It’s full of legacy people that have worked at Venmo and other companies that were acquired by PayPal and Braintree over the years. Some of these people were put into place because of their friendship with others in high places, and can’t perform at the level their job require.
Just google ‘Venmo’ and read the articles about company culture and finances. Those are all true. Poor leadership, awful management and lots of losses due to fraudsters.
But that’s only the beginning. Please read all other reviews, positive and negative, and see for yourself. Why? Because you’ll see how good reviews have literally zero upvotes and negative reviews have a lot of upvotes. Also look at how Venmo replies to glowing ones, but ignores those with substance.
Don’t be like me: do your research. Look at where people that work here were working before. Do they come from prestigious companies or did they jump a lot and come from places no one knows? Look at the release notes on the AppStore, and look at how many new features were pushed since a year ago. Ask about strategy and vision, but more importantly talk to junior people on the teams, they tend to be the most candid about ongoing issues.
I didn’t. And I made a mistake. I thought this was my big break: good money, stocks, a small enough team to have impact, a startup culture but with big company backing, cool office spot. Boy was I wrong.
Since I joined almost 8 months ago, I’ve dreaded coming to work. Lots of mediocre people in positions of power, mostly filled by white men. Some talented folks, but left in masses when stocks vested in May or are currently on the outs.
Opinions don’t matter since things are done without any strategy and they expect you to execute, not have a vision. Lots of external hiring to fill senior roles, without proper interview processes, and with those people bringing their friends over without their team’s input (which could be good if the people bringing them were good)
Don’t have a strong opinion or strive for excellence. People will try to discredit you, attack you and backstab you until you leave. This didn’t happen to me because I’m too irrelevant, but have seen it happen a lot lately.
Features and tweaks get pushed to the app without any checks, resulting in the app crashing and looking ugly. The product development process is a joke. No one follows it and leadership tends to not communicate and then show up in the middle of a sprint and change everything with no reason other that “someone at PayPal doesn’t like it”.
Product runs the show, but sucks at it. While competitors like Zelle and Square are eating up our cake, we struggle to push initiatives that will build up the product and make sure we stay relevant. Instead, venmo focuses on launching a card that has no clear benefits, and is playing catch up to others in the market.
All the work is compliance and engineers are expected to meet impossible deadlines, without clear product requirements outlined. The deadlines are set by people high up without checking with PMs and Project managers if things are doable.
Leadership can’t articulate objective reasons why Venmo will stay at the top of the game. And the reason is it won’t, and they know it.
Please don’t make the same mistake as I did and ruin your career. Don’t come here. Please do your research. No money, stocks or cool name is worth it.
