- Leadership
So let's start here. I'm not going to waste too much time on the CEO. Lots of horror stories about him online. One thing to note is that he has a nickname "psycho" among the execs in the industry which is actually quite funny. The self-proclaimed "genius" leads the self-proclaimed "greatest talent company in the world" . But enough about the guy who fires people on a whim, openly threatens his employees, condones racism and sexism and calls people retards on team calls with 500+ attendees.
The People Operations team is the biggest reason why Toptal has so many bad reviews and why it's such a terrible place to be at. What stands out about that team is its leadership and how they fabricate stories about other people, their sex lives, gossips openly in team calls, and shares personal and private information that were shared with them, only to make them look bad. They've proven time and time again that they can't be trusted, that the sole purpose of this team is to eliminate any threat from within at any sign of trouble no matter the cost.
A whole lot of nepotism happens there as friends and acquaintances get hired regularly and are tasked them to run errands, seemingly wanting to help people, but really wanting to remove anyone who is in the slightest way unhappy. People that have built the place that it is today have been backstabbed, sabotaged and removed by them.
- Culture
Reeeeaaallly doesn't exist. It's great when things are great, but at first sign of issues, whether internally, or externally -- people get thrown under a bus at first chance. The culture isn't terrible everywhere, there are smaller teams that have different dynamics which helps, but cross-team collaboration is non-existent 90% of the time. Toptal cares about revenue, and definitely not about it's employees.
What's funny here is that they've implemented a "cultural interview" as a step in every interview process, and it's hilarious that some of the people that are "culture ambassadors" don't know a thing about the company history, and if you ask them questions about bad reviews here -- they will of course blame the people that posted them, and label them as traitors, spineless dirtbags that have nothing better to do, than being jealous. You see, Toptal can't be wrong in anything. =D If you are this far in the interview process, and you get turned down, trust me -- You've just exhibited traits that make you a normal person, so anyone who wants to know how they fare on the "psycho-meter", they should try this out. By the way, we have a chat for culture ambassadors and it's hilarious to see how much they like praising each other and pat each other on the back. Seems like group therapy more than anything else.
As an example of how screwed up this company is, they refused to comment or issue a statement (lost a couple of employees because of this) on the BLM movement. And while they're within rights to do so, it's the reasons why they refused to do it that are terrible, and apparently, that's because they might upset some larger (Fortune 50) clients and lose business (since decision makers are white).
A word on leaving Toptal? You signed your death penalty. Prepare to get threatened, asked weird questions and reasons for leaving. Prepare to get terminated from Slack immediately in case you wanted to say BYE to people.
- Growth
I heard the Toptal didn't have career paths designed for most of the organization for years. People worked in the same roles for ages, without promotion, bonuses or raises.
That hasn't changed much because if you do get promoted, the raise is barely noticeable, but, you get a lot more responsibility in your role, and more things that you can get fired for.
- Compensation
You'll probably climb the Himalayas before you get a raise or a bonus here. At least it rarely happened in 2020 and it slightly improved as decent talented people started leaving.
The only people that do get it are those in leadership positions where their comp is attached to the "$1B goal by end of 2022".
As mentioned, when people started leaving, they realized they might lose those that they have trained for months, and started throwing money at them.
Mentioning you're considering leaving is the only way to get paid more.
- Diversity and inclusion
People are neither trained nor aware of what these terms mean.
Oh yeah, and take a look at the leadership roles, that should tell you how diverse this company is.
- Strategy & Mission Statement
" Let's get to $1B. "
You see, this company used to care about the "talent" around the world, but it no longer does. They've made some really good hires in leadership that could get them there, but they also made some poor choices as well.
And while it's OK to have great growth goals, it should not come at the expense of its talent.
Talent frequently gets the short end of the stick, when working with clients, and if clients complain and threaten to take it public, the talent ends up not getting paid, threatened with expulsion if they complain etc.
- Reviews Online
Most of the reviews here are posted by people that have been at the company less than a month. What Toptal did is hilarious, given they knew Glassdoor is like cancer, and it will continue to spread the more people leave. They included swag as part of the interview process, and made it necessary for people to post about it on social media on how great the company is.
They also often run NPS surveys and brag how the score is very high.
That is very much true except that there's fear of retaliation and termination if you score as anything less than 8 because every concern, and conversation you have about anything will result in you being blamed for how you feel. Again, Toptal can do no wrong. And people were bullied, harassed and ultimately fired for feeling anything but GREAT at the GREATEST TALENT COMPANY IN THE WORLD.
Read the reviews on other sites, and you'll notice a very odd pattern.
A massive amount of 5 Stars (barely any 2 - 3 - 4) and then a considerable amount of 1 Star reviews. Seems selective, doesn't it?
- Business Model
There is really not much "genius" here. We vet talent, and it's not that difficult. This is obviously visible from the slow growth, and poor retention from clients since quality has gone down.
Our proprietary platform is a decent tool, but probably obsolete and too complicated for what it was designed. We hear Taso talk about it as it was invented to cure cancer, but it's really a bunch of legacy code that nobody can't touch because it would stop working.
On the flipside though, Toptal is really not afraid to charge clients exorbitant rates. There's an insane markup to the rates engineers ask for.
For an example, an engineer would ask $25/hr and Toptal would mark it up to $80/hr while they mark it up even more for larger clients (they would add in excess of $100+ per hour).
We're pricing ourselves out, but I guess getting to $1B justifies the price. Oh yeah, good luck managing our talent and being responsible for failures. Toptal will only ever admit anything if you take it to court! =D
