Slack reviews

4.0

77% would recommend to a friend

(1,094 total reviews)
avatar

Stewart Butterfield

88% approve of CEO

70% positive business outlook

Slack has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 1,094 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Slack employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
3.0
Nov 17, 2015

Amazing product but starting to get a little political

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Slack is a high-velocity, awesomely creative, friendly place to work, and one of the best jobs I've had. Truly inspired by the dedication to the product and proud to say I'm an employee. I really enjoy: great engineering talent, well-reasoned decisions, a multitude of perks and good balance of right brained thinkers. We have a lot of opportunity in front of us and we're still in the building phase of the company so there is a lot to do and learn professionally and personally.

Cons

Scaling fast is exciting, but experiencing some growing pains along the way. A key leader is being irresponsible with use of power and introducing Yahoo-like politics. I believe some teams suffer from this more than others.

avatar
Slack Response
8y
Thank you for sharing your experience working at Slack. We understand that as Slack continues to grow it may not be the right place for everyone. We will continue to do our best to keep employees and their perspective a top priority so we can improve. We appreciate your honest feedback and wish you the very best.
4.0
Nov 12, 2018

External Perception Outpacing Reality

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

• Extremely strong, once-in-a-lifetime business. From a market perspective, there's no reason Slack can't be the next MSFT/Salesforce. MSFT presents some competition in the space, but it's Slack's market to lose. You definitely have job security here. • Compensation and perks are great. Fitness reimbursement, education, phone data, etc. You'll save a lot of money by working here. Office spaces are luxurious and thoughtfully designed. • You get to work on a product (many!) people actually use and care about • There are some truly extraordinary people working here that are a pleasure to work with and learn from. • Stewart is as "unique" and inspiring as he seems from the outside. Some other executives are the same way. • Slack is no longer a startup so it's less likely you'll need to work startup hours (e.g. 9a - 5p will swing it for most roles) • The bar for tech companies is lower than sea level, but Slack is still above it. From a total package perspective, there are few opportunities as good as this in Silicon Valley, even despite its many flaws.

Cons

• Despite Slack's diversity PR, some women and minorities still experience horrible things/sexism/lesser treatment there just like any other tech company. There's more than one case of a perpetrator not only not being punished because of incidents but being promoted. Internal surveys continually reflect the dissatisfaction from URMs and virtually nothing is done. It feels awful when the company is telling a story externally that is divorced from the realities many employees experience internally. • Senior leadership is extremely hit or miss. You're as likely to find inspiring leaders as you are to find people solely focused on building their personal brand/driving readership to their blog instead of doing any real work. • There are management chains completely devoid of accountability, where a bad manager reports to and is close with a bad manager who reports to and is close with a bad manager… This is as demoralizing for direct reports/peer managers as it sounds. • Your Slack experience is highly dependent on which department/team you're a part of e.g. someone in CE or Design is much more likely to report having a far better experience than someone in Marketing or Product, but it also varies highly from team to team within each department. Do your due diligence on the team you're joining. • The monolith of a codebase has finally caught up to product/engineering. Everyone's heard about the recent weeks' long code freeze but development velocity has indeed slowed to a snail's pace. With more and more large enterprise customers coming in, a rumored IPO, etc, it's unlikely this will turn around in any substantial way. This is extremely tough if you work in Product/Design/Engineering. • Slack's culture is "too nice" — people tend to be passive-aggressive and avoid difficult conversations/feedback. Poor performers who make it past 3-6 months are almost never managed out. The foundational values of the company like Empathy/Courtesy were well-intentioned but not fully thought out and the consequences can be felt now. • The reward for doing well is typically being driven to burnout — many high performing employees are barely making it to their 2 or 3 year marks, let alone 4 years or beyond.

1.0
Apr 14, 2020

Not the same company it was years ago

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great office, barista, great benefits and perks. If it wasnt for my stocks I would have left by now.

Cons

HR is political. They have no idea what they are doing and not helping employees at all. IT department is political. They each bring people from their previous companies, and leaving tenured employees out to dry. Young, unexperienced, 2 years in IT kids are getting promoted to managers simply because they are good at sucking up and throwing people under the bus. You can work day in and night, if you didnt know your manager from another company, or if you are really giving them honest feedback you will get bad performance ratings and they will not promote you on purpose. People that were previously interns are now managing a team of 5 with less than 2 years on the jobs when Master degree, 15 years of experience professionals are just analyst. This is a joke. Upper management is amazing and is trying to promote a culture that no-one on the lower management follows because they count everything you say against you.

avatar
Slack Response
6y
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. We appreciate your candor and take all employee feedback seriously. We encourage employees to meet one on one with their managers, up their management chain or People Partners to share feedback regularly. If you are not comfortable going to your manager or People Partner, you can escalate this to me or Dawn Sharifan, VP of People. Alternatively, executives host office hours regularly and we encourage you to schedule time and share your feedback directly. Thank you again for providing this valuable feedback.
Viewing 4 - 6 of 1,094 Reviews

Glassdoor has 1,226 Slack reviews submitted anonymously by Slack employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Slack is right for you.