Pros
Generally smart and passionate co-workers who are interested in making an impact Mission-driven organization that truly want to make an impact to democratize opportunity for everyone
Cons
Where do I begin... Leadership is extremely disorganized and amateurish. CFO joined and left within a year right as the market took a sharp turn for the worse, and now there is no adult in the room to properly manage finances. Not a single person on the exec team has any clue on how to navigate through a downturn. Enterprise sales, probably the most important team in a SaaS organization, consistently underperforms with no improvement plan. Hired a seasoned Enterprise sales exec with 20+ years of experience, only to let him go after 6 weeks. Like cmon, you're hiring company leadership, not an entry-level SDR who just graduated. Quota attainment is absolute trash, with 1 outta 4 or 5 AEs hitting the 70-80% expected attainment. Sure, sales is a revolving door, but the amount of turnover not only on the rep level, but also on the manager level, is just unprecedented. I've worked at a few tech companies now and none comes as close to the turnover that Handshake has seen. Mediocre product with limited modules have resulted in expansion softness. This combined with underperformance from the sales team explains why Handshake has consistently missed target, and only grew at a fraction of what they told the board that they would in FY22. Growth for FY23 has been reduced as well. Given the market is reverting to normalized valuation levels, Handshake's current valuation is probably $1.5bn at best, and it will take at least to the end of FY24 to get back to the $3.5bn valuation. Employee's equity is taking a huge bath and has no way of cashing out. And of course, there is the shady layoffs quietly re-branded as "performance related separations." Most folks who got let go had no clue they were underperforming, and didn't even get a review or a PIP conversation. Instead of doing a round a layoffs like any normal tech firm, Handshake decided to save its image and simply screw its employees over. One of the most despicable things to do imo. Not only that, after the layoffs happened, the CEO announced during all hands that the company is pivoting to a "high performance culture," basically gaslighting the employees and blaming them for underperforming. Would've been a great company, but now I'd recommend people to avoid at all costs. You join startups with the hope that your equity will triple and quadruple in a few years; this simply will not happen with Handshake.