Lightspeed reviews

3.5

61% would recommend to a friend

(1,070 total reviews)
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Dax Dasilva

75% approve of CEO

49% positive business outlook

Lightspeed has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 1,070 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Lightspeed 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
2.0
Nov 19, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Young, fun culture with great parties and free snacks - Fast growth startup with prominent venture capital backing

Cons

- Low wages/salaries and long hours - Disorganized, silo-ed departments - Little to no opportunity for career growth or advancement - Very political/toxic environment ever since new management came on board after VC investment - HR non-existent, just an admin function - Company is purely sales driven with no moral compass

2.0
Jun 12, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I had some smart and talented colleagues, and some of them were a joy to work with. Some of the new leadership seems to have great ideas about how Lightspeed can win from a business perspective. The company has no shortage of interesting technical and business problems, and it's working pretty hard to solve them.

Cons

The last "pro" really gets to the heart of it: you, as a happy, successful, productive person, are not a problem they are interested in solving. Your success will only come at the mercy of Lightspeed's aggressive, cutthroat business goals. What you want and how you feel do not matter because those things do not fit on the roadmap. And management isn't competent or motivated enough (let alone allowed) to prioritize anything else. If that kind of capitalism-at-the-expense-of-everything-else work excites you, you'll feel right at home. The company is simply too overgrown and bloated from acquisitions to establish a good, lasting culture. It's all window dressing and finger crossing. They are endlessly playing catchup from all those acquisitions and your wellbeing and job security are in jeopardy because of it. This is probably the norm at lots of tech companies right now, sure. But Lightspeed didn't have any great unified culture to begin with, nothing to fall back on after half a dozen sloppy and badly integrated acquisitions. You may find success as an engineer at Lightspeed if you enjoy: - Competing with your peers instead of collaborating with them - Pulling rank and viewing every interaction as hierarchical - Being evaluated based on fuzzy, purely political metrics like "visibility" - Carefully guarding what you say publicly for fear of retaliation or perception - Drama, high rates of turnover, and constantly shifting goal posts - Working in a stressful environment lacking honest, direct feedback - Prioritizing DX over UX - Complexity as a virtue I'm sure there are good engineering teams/squads/pockets at the company. Some of the acquired companies that didn't hemorrhage employees were able to maintain much of what worked for them. If you're lucky, you may find yourself on one of those teams. Do you want to take the risk that you don't? If the past is any predictor of the future, the company will continue to endure significant leadership shakedowns, mass layoffs, and long periods of volatility and instability. Despite the amount of cash they allege to have in the bank, they behave like a company that's desperate.

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Lightspeed Response
2y
Hi, thank you for sharing your review here on Glassdoor. What you have described is not at all the experience we want for our employees. We take this review seriously and to be able to address this we need more information. If you are open to it please reach out to our confidential email at people@lightspeedhq.com or to your People Business Partner or manager - whoever you feel comfortable with. Thank you for all of the contributions you are making here at Lightspeed and we hope to hear from you directly.
3.0
May 28, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Nice people, good perks (food, RRSP…), amazing office, growing.

Cons

I’ve been working for some time in payments at Lightspeed. I was lucky enough to work on high impact projects with some remarkable people. Unfortunately for a few months now, the team has been in a painful downward spiral. Culminating today with an appalling product vision. If you consider joining Lightspeed, be sure to select your team carefully. Ask to meet as many of your future colleagues as possible, and not just devs.

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Lightspeed Response
7y
Thank you for sharing. We’re glad to know that you were able to work on impactful projects during your time with us. Life at Lightspeed moves quickly, and our intention is to continue to build on our products vision and roadmap. There are always improvements that can be made, and we appreciate the candid feedback.
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Glassdoor has 1,206 Lightspeed reviews submitted anonymously by Lightspeed employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Lightspeed is right for you.