Look elsewhere - Anonymous employee Instacart Employee Review

1.0
7 Apr 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Perks - Food is tasty - Cool office and decor - Interesting speakers sometimes come in

Cons

Employee morale has dipped fairly low. While I can only speak to limited teams, managers seem either inexperienced or don't genuinely care about their employees' career development and happiness. Some managers are tunnel-visioned into delivering on company goals so they can look good to execs up top, while caring very little about whether the people down below are engaged. There's a huge disconnect between how executives vs. executers view management. A previous culture engagement survey showed that a very low % of employees on certain teams felt there were avenues to develop themselves and gain new skills, and there hasn't been focused effort to improve this. Culture here involves managers insinuating to their employees that any lack of morale or motivation is a direct fault of the employees themselves. To that point, I say sure, employees can try to be positive, take initiatives to seek out challenges, etc. But if employee roles are defined and positioned to maintain monotonous and never-ending duties, then their opportunities for advancement will be extremely limited despite any attempts to seek out non-core work. This negatively affects morale and makes you wonder about the purpose of your job. Worse, some managers believe that interesting projects/skills development should be sought out on your own extra time and cannot interfere with your usual day-to-day. If that's the case, then managers and recruiters need to stop overselling these roles as career advancement opportunities or do a better job of hiring for the right levels.

Explore other reviews about Instacart

5.0
29 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great gig that can be done on flexible hours.

Cons

Gas prices having been go up.

2.0
21 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Fun going out and talking to people. You will interact with people everyday. You control how much you get paid. Lots of flexibility in the time between accepting an order and traveling to the store and beginning to shop. It isn't pedal to the metal to get to the store like DoorDash is. You can also cancel batches after accepting as long as you keep your rate under 15%. This is different from DoorDash where your rankings will suffer if g.t. 2% cancellation rate.

Cons

There's a learning curve and it takes a while to learn each chain of stores' items. Once you become proficient at one store, the algorithm will lowball your offers relative to other less-experienced Instacart shoppers. Overall, Instacart shoppers likely get paid similar or less than the store's regular employees.

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