The bad:
Management-
I was constantly mismanaged- I had two managers leave the company, another fired, and multiple instances of waiting for a manager who was “yet to be hired” for months
Managers (my own and others) often asked that their directs provide content/data for them to present in meetings with higher ups without providing credit
Pay-
Many people at Rover are grossly underpaid, even in non customer facing roles. What does “grossly” mean, you ask? At the time my employment at Rover ended, my pay was ~48k and change. My current salary is more than double this and I am doing the same type of work at another tech company. I won’t disclose the type of work I did/am doing for fear of being easily identified, but I did want to include this information to caution anyone who may be considering starting their career at Rover. There were also worse instances of lack of pay and promotion for folks holding marginalized identities as well (specifically women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community). Additionally, a group of employees working to obtain greater pay transparency receive emails from the legal team that they perceived as threatening their jobs.
Culture-
Anyone working in operations or customer service should expect to be treated as lesser by those in upper management or on other teams. At first, you might feel valued by “shout outs” and free food. This will turn into being made to feel special because your supervisor gives you extra projects/work that isn’t customer-facing or is outside of your job description. You might even decide to work off the clock to make these projects happen, and your supervisor will half heartedly feign disapproval. When reviews happen, do not expect to see compensation for this. Social stigmas will make themselves apparent as well. There was more than one instance of employees who moved out of a customer-facing role being discouraged from drinking at company events, with the implication that partaking in this with the customer-facing employees would damage their career trajectory.
If you are a BIPOC, I would highly recommend reading the comments of former employees from Rover’s recent Linkedin post titled “A Message of Solidarity” in response to the Black Lives Matter protests and related movement for greater insight into the experience of former employees of color. Spoiler: it’s terrible and the upward mobility noted in the pros section of this review is likely due to my whiteness.
TLDR; if you want to:
-work in operations or customer service
-focus on your work, rather than the office politics around you
-be able to afford living in the city of Seattle
Rover is not for you.
