Credit Karma FAQ

Pros

- Most of the workforce is talented, smart, and friendly. I've made some great friends in the years I've worked at Credit Karma. - I've generally gotten the impression that C-suite leadership cares about its employees. When other companies would be laying off their staff, C-suite would temporarily freeze hiring and reduce some non-essential benefits to keep everyone on board. I preferred this sense of community. - Depending on the team, you could have a ton of autonomy and trust. You'll likely have core tasks you need to accomplish, but there's plenty of opportunity to improve things. - Competitive compensation and great benefits. - Legitimately cares about Diversity and Inclusion with an internal D&I team that is responsible for keeping the company accountable by metrics and reports on them company-wide. - Supports a healthy work/life balance, but depending on who you are it's easy to put in more. - Offices have an open bar. Generally, I've been impressed with how Credit Karma employees can have a good time while also not getting out of hand. Fun bunch to hang with. There's a ton more to say and if Glassdoor allows me to edit this, I'll try to update this review as I reflect more. But generally, I *highly recommend* giving Credit Karma a try if the high-level looks okay to you. I've heard of many horror stories of other large tech companies and FAANG and it always made me relieved to work at Credit Karma. The years I worked there were the best in my career so far and if they were open to remote work, I'd probably still be working for them. Much love to my fellow Karmanauts!

Cons

- Historically, against any remote work. For multiple years the subject of remote or hybrid work would come up every year, and leadership wouldn't budge until the pandemic. Recently, there's been a push to return to office with a hybrid model where employees are in-office a few days a week. From what I know, the reception seems mixed but leadership is steadfast in bringing employees back to office. - Some engineering teams, especially engineering infrastructure teams, are very slow to move for one reason or another. Oftentimes, they seem understaffed but can also be unfriendly, unhelpful, and unwelcoming of outside contributing. Similarly, some internal tooling is dated and slow to improve or under-resourced and left to the product teams to maintain. - Now that Credit Karma is owned by Intuit a lot of changes to the company have happened and will continue to happen. Credit Karma products are integrating with other Intuit products, especially TurboTax. This is exciting from a scale standpoint, but might prioritize fewer exciting Credit Karma product big bets and the company overall has a more "corporate" feeling. - Lost some of its funky charm as its grown. - Depending on what team you're on and who your manager is, you could have more challenge than others to get opportunities for career growth and promotions. In some cases, there are a lot of senior-level and above employees that bring questionable value for their level. Some high-potential or high-value employees are undervalued. - No more free meals and fewer and less frequent team outings (as of 2022). - Unless you're senior-level or above flexibility in long-term time-off, such as for a sabbatical, is unlikely to be approved. This excludes maternity and baby-bonding leave.

Pros

Excellent healthcare benefits and parental leave policy.

Cons

Sometimes there are long work hours.

Pros

Most employees are genuinely nice and there is a culture of caring that starts at the top. People believe in and exhibit the company values for the most part. You’re allowed to be human and make mistakes so there’s little finger pointing and not a lot of politics. Lots of great talent and smart people. Employees are encouraged to follow a career path that interests them. Super-generous annual personal development benefit and overall benefits are great as well. Pay equity ensures that you don’t have to go elsewhere to make market salary. Office is nice with loads of snacks and free coffee bar. Beautiful view from 19th floor rooftop. The product is truly intended to help people.

Cons

Employees have been told to come in to the office more than half the time. It’s not enforced well across the board so some groups are in three days while others may be in one. One problem of being in the office is that the company has not done much to help with parking. The building’s below ground parking is only available on a paid monthly basis and is currently full. Parking elsewhere is expensive, closes early, and/or you have to walk through a sketchy area. Way too many meetings. So many, that it’s hard to get work done.

Advice to Management

Fantastic company culture so keep doing what you’re doing! Start encouraging alternatives to meeting for every little thing.

Pros

Excellent healthcare benefits and parental leave policy.

Cons

Sometimes there are long work hours.

Pros

- Great pay, benefits, equity, etc. - Some really smart people on the team. - Huge budgets, tons of experience in a short amount of time.

Cons

- Things have gone downhill dramatically since Intuit bought the company. More spending/responsibility than ever, hiring at an extremely slow pace for many teams, EVERYONE is burnt out. Stress pours down from the top, it's really not sustainable. - Politics, politics, politics. Both in the professional sense and the societal. If you don't drink the Kool-Aid, suck up to the right people or vote for certain politicians (many public comments at the detriment of Republicans/Conservatives - seriously), good luck. You will forever feel alienated from public Slack channels, peer recognition, company-wide updates, and the truly awful Chief People Officer. - The app is really hard to be motivated to work with; quite frankly, it's mostly taking advantage of poor people for profit. When has taking on more debt or another credit card ever actually helped anyone? - The company mission of "helpfulness" is much more a concept than a reality. Many people make you feel bad for asking for help, and most of the time it seemed like everyone just wanted to prove how smart they were. - Vaccine mandate coming in quick. They've already said that they won't hire people who aren't vaccinated, won't make exceptions for anyone to work-from-home. - No work from home opportunities post-covid. We all bent over backwards to shift our lives and keep the company running (now at a higher level than ever), and there isn't even consideration of allowing people to continue working from home. Honestly, my life has been significantly better since leaving Credit Karma.

Advice to Management

Look at your teams, look at what you are asking from people, and look at the gaps that exist. Such better work can come from these teams if they are properly staffed, trained, equipped and supported. For a company that preaches equality so much, it's alarming how alienated I (and many others) felt for having slightly differing beliefs.