There are a lot of cons to working at Clever. I'm sharing these knowing that it will quite easily reveal my identity to Clever, because I feel it's important to share my true, unfiltered experience with job seekers. **No matching 401(k) contributions** We didn't even have a 401(k) option 'til a year ago. Now that we do, there's no matching. Their reasoning? We don't want to penalize people who want to invest their money elsewhere. Yeah, because that makes a whole lot of sense. Just be transparent and say you're too cheap to offer us matching contributions. **High turnover rate** A lot of people have been quitting lately, and I can't blame them. Over the past four months, I've had 3 different bosses. All of the colleagues I was working with four months ago are no longer with the company. I've only been at the company for just over 1.5 years, and I'm one of the longest-tenured people there. **No career trajectory for certain roles** I've been working as an editor at Clever for 1.5 years. In that time, there has been no opportunity for a promotion. In fact, there is absolutely no career trajectory at all for the editor role. I'm not even really sure what my job technically is - my original job description was vague, and it's never been fine-tuned at all. I've been told for over a year that a career progression is "in the works." I couldn't wait around any longer for it. It's clear the company doesn't prioritize editors and just views them as lower-level individual contributors who aren't really worth much - despite many of us coming from managing editorial roles where we led teams and managed content calendars on our own. **The norm is to do things outside of/above and beyond your role with no additional compensation** This is my biggest beef with Clever. Last year, I got tired of being an "editor" with no career direction, so I began to pivot into more of a team lead role. I thought it would be a nice challenge to have more of a managing role and also help me develop new skills. My manager was on board with this, and so was leadership. I took the initiative and spent several quarters in "training" where I led my team of writers and an editor, planned out content, and tracked the success of that content. Keep in mind - I was still an "editor" at this point, so I hadn't gotten a raise or title change. But I was basically fully in charge of my team and operating solely as a team lead. I was going the extra mile with the promise that I would be rewarded. I thought all was going well - I had good feedback from my manager and direct reports, and I was fully expecting my job title and salary to be officially adjusted in the next quarterly review. Nope! Turns out, my manager and team were fired, and I was forced back into the editor role because "that's where the company needed me." I did not receive a raise, and I returned to a future of uncertain career prospects. After being screwed like that, I had obviously lost a lot of my passion for my job, so I didn't put in as much extra effort. Still, I had glowing feedback in my annual review, and my manager and peers all said I was doing a good job. But at some point, I guess things changed. Apparently, just editing and not going above and beyond aren't good enough for the company, because I was pulled aside and basically told that I needed to become more engaged or leave the company. I chose to leave. Unfortunately, my story is just one of many. Clever relies heavily on "lagging indicators" rather than "leading indicators," and I think it's a way they can brainwash you into working harder without paying you what you deserve. **Very uncertain future** In October 2022, Clever had major layoffs with no warning. Mere weeks prior, the CEO was promising us our jobs were secure and the company's future was looking bright. Meanwhile, they must have been already planning the layoffs. A majority of the content staff was laid off (minus the managers of course). Now, all we have left are a few writers/editors and a ton of team leads. It's management bloat. All in all, I think around 40 people were let go - of course, I don't know for sure because they didn't tell us the full number or even give us a list of names - we only found out who was let go because they were removed from Slack channels. Now, Clever still seems like it's drowning. They're trying to get into any partnership they can to stay profitable, and it feels really desperate. They recently raised their pricing from 1% to 1.5% seemingly on a whim. **Constant change and whiplash** If you thought Clever might be a company where you could settle in and get comfy, think again. Direction is constantly changing here - so much so, that it's often hard to keep track of which directive we're following now. Major decisions are seemingly made overnight, and with no input from the rest of the team. As I mentioned, I've had three different managers in four months. During that time, my managers created several plans for the quarter, only to have them completely scrapped, forcing them to start from square one. This isn't a new thing - it's been like this since I joined. Kind of makes me glad the team lead role was ripped from me - I didn't have to deal with the burden of spending a week on a plan and then being told we need to move in a different direction. You might argue - Clever is a startup, of course things are always in flex. Yes, but at what point should a startup just be a "company"? Clever has been around since 2017. It's old enough to be in kindergarten - I don't think we can call it a startup much longer. It's just a company that doesn't know how to manage itself and thrives on chaos.
