Great mission, great people, leadership missteps - Anonymous employee Presence Employee Review

3.0
Oct 31, 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- It's easy to get behind the company's mission of providing students life-changing access to licensed therapists. - It's still a startup, so there is the opportunity to make a difference in the company's processes or direction. - I think it's a great product and a great service. - The people I worked with were smart, hardworking, and kind. - Good office location in the Financial District of San Francisco. - Snacks and drinks provided.

Cons

Disclaimer: The culture may have shifted since I left the company. There has been a lot of change since then. - The culture shifted from fun and free-spirited to very restrained and politically correct. HR set the tone for the office. - The company went from nimble and startup-y to sluggish and bureaucratic. It became difficult to make important process improvements. After a couple rounds of layoffs, however, the company has become leaner. - There was a lot of fear and uncertainty around layoffs from late 2017-early 2018. Hopefully there won't be much more of that. - Historically, there was mostly lip-service paid to professional development and career advancement. However, I believe there have been initiatives to change that. - For several years, the Sales team was badly mismanaged. There was an incredible amount of turnover among Sales leadership. There was a strong and consistent bias toward the demands and opinions of salespeople — to the point of disregarding other departments and creating dysfunctional processes. - The company grabbed at some new markets without proper research, leading to lots of wasted effort and money. They have seemingly learned from those mistakes and have doubled down on the most profitable service: online speech therapy.

Explore other reviews about Presence

5.0
Jul 8, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

just want to sign up

Cons

pay, new contracts every year

2.0
Nov 24, 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

+ the colleagues I have worked with are delightful and driven to serve the students + my teammates are helpful and willing to pitch in + work life balance depends on the school season but overall manageable for being fully remote + company presentations are informative, highly scripted, and professional

Cons

- annual raises are stingy and below the inflation rate - the executive team and next level down leadership team are constantly turning over, which is exhausting - every c-suite title leader has changed in the last three years except for the CEO - the company strategy is unclear and my team's responsibilities have several times - it's clear that some teams are favorited way more than others (look at who they're hiring) - DEI has all but disappeared since the Chief People Officer left a few years ago

8
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All