I hope job seekers interested in working at Udacity do their research to see that the company is currently trying to hide honest and unflattering reviews by posting manufactured, overly fake positives to cover up the core issues. But you see, this action in itself is only *one* of the many examples of a toxic culture that has emerged from leadership within the company over the last year. Udacity is misrepresenting its values and culture online to mislead people into joining. Don't fall for those shallow reviews. Don't fall for the new "Life at Udacity" HR video. They are misusing Glassdoor in a dark way, which also goes against Glassdoor's values of integrity and accountability.
Read all the other negative reviews. Here's more insight into some red flags tagging toxic culture:
- "Job security" — We have had many layoffs over the year (you can google it). It is not healthy to expect a layoff every few months. The last few in the past year were the most brutal. Teams were let go and crucial roles were eliminated to create more runway for the company to stay afloat. Many talented and strong performers were cut without reason. Teams were whittled away by each layoff, which eventually left 1 person to do the job of at least 2-3 others. They also managed to lay off almost every single pregnant woman or woman on maternity leave. Whenever a last minute All Hands event pops up on the calendar, everyone became fearful that a layoff was imminent, because historically that's what happens when All Hands is rescheduled to an odd time or day. This emotional insecurity led to a decline in productivity and focus as well.
- "Rebrands" — Udacity does not invest in design (any longer) because leadership does not see or understand the ROI of design. Design and designers are treated as a service by many at the company. There is a lot of backseat designing, politics, "make it pop" (cringe), "make this bigger/bolder" without reasoning. They do not trust the designers to do what they're good at, they just tell the "design robots" what to "design." The marketing/growth team has managed to sneak in a lot of dark patterns into the marketing site to trick users into buying. These patterns go against so many years of UX and usability research. Leaders in marketing/growth and some engineers always think designers "get in the way." They are always "rebranding" by simply reskinning a single page, when in fact, a true rebrand should not only include a change in the look and feel but should also be delivering what is supposed to be a dramatically improved product and service for the student across the entire experience. There is no consistency across pages, it is all frankensteined now.
- "Feature Launches" — Fake deadlines driven by unnecessary PR are sometimes the driver behind ridiculous launches, instead of proper roadmap planning. Years and years of trying to produce a plan, and there is still no roadmap. Instead, they try things, sunset them, then try them again. Let's build a chat feature! Let's move to Slack! Let's move back to chat. They are going in circles and can't figure out what to build or focus on. These fake deadlines make everyone work overtime, including the weekends, which eventually leads to burnout. Engineers are not even asked for estimates on how long something would take to be built, they are just given a hard deadline. The last launch burned everyone out, it even had engineers working tirelessly in shifts. Leaders also proudly boasted how they were working on a Sunday.
- "Leadership" — There are incompetent people in charge who don't know what they are doing. Incompetent people, researchers have found, are not only poor performers, they are also unable to accurately assess and recognize the quality of their own work. These low performers are also unable to recognize the skill and competence levels of other people, which is part of the reason why they consistently view themselves as better, more capable, and more knowledgeable than others. This is a lack of self-awareness and leads to them hiring people who are not smarter than them, but more of the same, or worse.
- "Egos" — Since there has been so many layoffs and restructuring, many people have been promoted within to higher inflated titles, without the experience or hard work. This, in turn, has also inflated their egos. These voices are now louder to appear important. Big on talk, short on action. They have loud conversations (which should be private) out in the open instead of going into conference rooms. They will cut you off and refuse to see your side of things. They have short tempers, are rude and take their anger out on others. They make it very difficult to collaborate because they're not willing to listen or learn. The worst thing is they are enabled by others in the same circle of inflated titles, and there is no accountability for their arrogant actions.
- "Quality" — Good, fast or cheap? Pick 2 only. Udacity chose fast and cheap, which has led to a steady decline in the quality of services and content. New Nanodegrees keep appearing with speed. For degrees that are doing well, content is outdated and never iterated/improved upon (a longtime complaint of students). Udacity also does not invest in infrastructure, so there is a ton of technical debt that is just growing by the day. No one understands that it takes time to prove out the business case and justify a significant cost and effort. "We need to become profitable" is not a business case that can be solved in two weeks without proper infrastructure.
- "Godfather" — The company's CEO has always been known as the "godfather of free online education" but it's not free anymore. There was a time when he was out of control, sending emails to the entire company saying "We suck" to try to "empower" us to make a change. He also uses a lot of war analogies and created a "red tape" award. So motivating.
