Wise seems wonderful, but there are many cracks under the surface.
Pros
- Benefits were amazing, PTO was unbeatable for a US company. - Laid back environment with casual dress - Great offices with money spent on comfort and food - Generally, they hire nice people. - I didn't see much discrimination based on race or gender.
Cons
- Compensation is lower than competitors. I doubled my salary when I left for a very similar role. - The payroll team, since it is a mainly Euro company, rarely got US taxes and payroll correct. I had a corrected W2 for 4 years, in one year I received 3 corrected W2s. There were multiple instances over the years that we simply did not get paid and it would take months to be corrected. PTO was miscounted or not paid out on multiple occasions. - This also goes for the stocks. At the time that you go to sell, prepare to owe additional taxes as they do not take out proper US federal taxes. - The company structure is obscenely disjointed. They talk about "individually empowered teams" - i.e. the left doesn't talk to the right. It's debilitating. - Poor career trajectory based on your location and team. There are frequent "unofficial" hiring freezes and layoffs (on smaller and larger scales). They have kept the startup mentality of having the fewest amount of people doing the most amount of work, though the company is much too large and established for this to be efficient.
