Presence reviews

3.3

50% would recommend to a friend

(264 total reviews)
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Kate Eberle Walker

51% approve of CEO

48% positive business outlook

Presence has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 264 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Presence employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Education industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

264 reviews
1.0
Dec 17, 2018

Simply a Mess

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There are not many "pros" working here but there are quite a few amateurs. The underlying mission of helping children is admirable.

Cons

Right now there are two camps. Camp 1 mistakenly believes that the venture capitalists who sat idly by while the Founders and several rounds of unqualified Executives wasted their money and never devised a coherent business strategy somehow, suddenly, have the acumen and wherewithal to turn the business around. Camp 2 knows better. Problem is it's too hard to tell who is in which camp given how many politically savvy career opportunists have agreed to just smile and hand out fruit flavored powdered drink (can't afford Kool-Aid) to help boost morale. HR appears to only come back from vacation to lay people off or process resignations.

2.0
Dec 6, 2018

Focused on Financial Margins Over Student Impact

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Strong compensation plan, but they do not have enough supply for sales reps to hit their goals.

Cons

They are focused on financial margins over student impact. Not willing to address the churn of clinicians and staff. The executive team cannot be trusted and the company’s future looks bleak. They do not understand their core business; think of themselves as a tech company as opposed to being a staffing company that provides therapy services online.

3.0
Oct 31, 2018

Great mission, great people, leadership missteps

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.

Viewing 163 - 165 of 264 Reviews

Glassdoor has 381 Presence reviews submitted anonymously by Presence employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Presence is right for you.