Sales people here are as temporary as the laborers they’re being asked to place in open roles. It doesn’t take long for most people to realize something isn’t quite right, and by 2-3 months they’re begging for any opportunity anywhere else. Why? Ultimately, the product, but also everything leading up to that.
CURRENT STATE:
Instawork is a shorter, less attractive WeWork, and will likely meet the same end. But instead of being a new age party cult, the vibe here is the closest thing I’ve seen in the real world to Narkina 5 Imperial Prison Complex in the series Andor.
IW is doing for temp work what WW did for commercial real estate leasing - making it seem like a technology software play while accomplishing almost nothing in the way of game changing innovation or practice. And like WeWork, Instawork touts all the flimsy overvaluation that would never stand up to a 3rd party audit paired with a sort of low energy sense of panic in the C Suite. Maybe, then, it’s a plus that they have far less charismatic or even interesting founders and top brass.
Sales people here are as temporary as the laborers they’re being asked to place in open roles. It doesn’t take long for most people to realize something isn’t quite right, and by 2-3 months they’re begging for any opportunity anywhere else. Why? Ultimately, the product, but also everything leading up to that.
FUNDING: The company got $60 million in new funding in May of 2023 - back when everyone else was avoiding taking money because the terms were so bad - which means it was almost certainly a desperate fundraise as evidenced by the 10% layoff and management shakeup that followed in August, and now a new round of sudden cuts more recently to end the year.
TRAINING: The amount of “training” for the first two weeks - and then every day at 8 am (non-negotiable) are comical given the nature of what they actually do. And none of the training pertains to how the industries you sell to operate - it’s all about making the perfect cold call. You will not become an expert in anything for your troubles, except maybe bird species (not worth explaining). You will inexplicably be placed on two parallel sales teams with 2 different managers and sets of goals for the first 2-3 months. Not normal. Not productive.
OFFICE: 3 mandatory days in the office, lunch provided for only 2. The coffee is the worst, bring your own. The only real perk to coming in is the opportunity to compare notes with coworkers on where else is hiring and how much longer you think you can tolerate being at Instawork.
PRODUCT: You are not selling software! This is not a SaaS company - it is a large scale temp staffing agency with an app. Your quota is based on “partners” renting users of the app to be temp workers and you get paid on shifts worked (by other people) in the first 30-60 days. You do not get a chance to create a book of business in any way. This model may have worked during the strange market conditions of Covid, but demand is way down and the model has not adapted. Need is way down, expectations (and promises to investors) are the same. It’s a brutal position to be in as a sales person.
You’ll quickly notice that the vetting standards for workers are suspect, which is maybe how some temps show up to work drunk, high, and shirtless and others end up living on a bed of towels at the country club they signed up to work at (until they get discovered and ruin your quota when the club cancels all future shifts). One of the happier customers acknowledged that they have to send home about 60% of the workers that IW sends because they’re underqualified. Impressed? Another customer contact went as far as filling out his own worker profile with nonsense, BS’ing his way through the 30 minute vetting phone call, and getting himself approved to become a worker he could hire. It’s unsurprising then that referrals and inbound leads are fewer in number than employees who stay more than a year.
COMP: You don’t have a revenue target, which is unusual. You get paid on those shifts that you get staffed and which get worked. The problem is that if you have temps on day 1 or 2 that show up drunk, or don’t show up, or OD on the job, or try to threaten a workman’s comp lawsuit against the “partner”, the partner will cancel those shifts you thought you booked to hit quota. I have never seen a sale with less security or stickiness.
In the unlikely event that they continue using Instawork after 2 months, you won’t get paid anything for it. In fact, you’ll probably be moved to a different territory by then, so you can focus on harassing the next poor SOB whose cell phone number was just assigned to you.
FALSE POSITIVES: Note the lack of enthusiasm in the 10 word positive reviews or the ones that reference a “mission driven high performance culture” that normal people would totally refer to in their attempt to provide a helpful description of a workplace, right above “no real cons come to mind”.
