Great place to work - Director of Growth Spellbook Employee Review

5.0
7 Jan 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Great place to ship work - Very low bureaucratic friction in producing work - Low drama/company politics - Company is focused on output and overall success - Have produced the best work of my career here - CEO is very technical and actually cares

Cons

- Signs of bureaucratic layers and politics emerging - Pay is good overall but can lag industry - Very much a startup, not great at work/life balance, but better than most

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Spellbook Response
3mo
Thanks so much for sharing your experiences working at Spellbook! We couldn't have said it better ourselves—we care about giving our team agency to get things done and removing barriers along the way. We benchmark our compensation to market to remain competitive and are working to keep our organization as flat as possible (even with our growth) to avoid unnecessary bureaucratic layers. Appreciate having you on this journey with us!

Explore other reviews about Spellbook

5.0
26 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The work is creative, cutting edge, challenging high-velocity and new. The culture is mind over matter and anti-beurocratic. There are decades worth of experience mentoring you on difficult problems. Working at a startup isn't for everyone, but if you feel pressure is a privilege this is the place. Diamonds are made here!

Cons

Sometimes we feel "understaffed" but honestly, it's because the bar is high and I'm grateful for that.

1
1.0
28 Jan 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You get a paycheque, but other than that, pretty much nothing.

Cons

This place has no real management, and nobody cares about or even sees your contributions. There are effectively no review cycles. There are two founding engineers with inflated egos who claim all the authority to tell people what to do and randomly take over or close other people’s PRs. They brought in some guy, presumably to fix some of the above, but his only apparent interest is replacing the workforce with his own people, which I’ve seen happen too many times throughout my career. This typically doesn’t end well. The tech stack is extremely trivial and boring. There aren’t any interesting projects; it’s all just shoveling data around and calling LLMs. Using an async task processor is about as complex as things get, and only a privileged few are even allowed to touch that without offending egos. Talking to product pretty much felt like interacting with a 14-year-old. In summary: one big kindergarten.

2
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Spellbook Response
3mo
Appreciate you sharing your perspective, although it is disappointing to hear. We make every effort to recognize our team's contributions and create energy, whether through our kudos channel, during company meetings or 1:1, and leverage our biannual review cycles as an additional opportunity for managers to highlight individual successes. We have an incredible team that brings a wealth of diverse experience and skills, working together without egos to tackle new challenges each day, solve customer pain points with comical speed, and review PRs that focus on progress rather than perfection. Sounds like we weren't the right fit for you, but we wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours.
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