Good pay, decent work, no benefits, no promotion pipelines - Software Architect Crossover for Work Employee Review

4.0
10 Jul 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Fully remote company (so no hassle of commuting) - Great pay (if you live in countries where the cost of living is lower) - Decent work opportunities (i've mostly liked the work I got to do on different teams. The company works a lot with AWS services, so good learning environment) - Some opportunities to get freely cloud certified with resources to prepare towards this

Cons

- No benefits besides pay (which is okay on some level because of the higher standard of pay, but as an employee benefits are always nice) - Lack of any sort of promotional pipelines (supposedly present but I know several people who have struggled to get promoted internally) - Apply as an external candidate for promotion (against everyone else and when you clear all the tests, interviews at which point external candidates get the role, you are also evaluated for your performance in the last 12 weeks) - Candidate performance evaluation is heavily metric-based but I dont think this works as you'd like. Some engineers tend to focus on metrics over quality of software which cannot be the intention of your evaluation process - No on-site meetups once a year etc. Can result in alienation of members in a team where people only interact about work and get off zoom calls

avatar
Crossover for Work Response
2y
Hey, thanks so much for the review! We appreciate the feedback around promotions – we're working to make this process easier for existing workers. We would like to address your feedback around benefits. It's important to understand that because independent contractors aren't employees, they don't accrue benefits like paid leave. This is true globally and not just at Crossover. It's one of the big reasons why the pay is so high – we deliberately overcompensate so workers can typically afford the healthcare packages and vacations that they would have expected in a salaried position.

Explore other reviews about Crossover for Work

5.0
26 Sept 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

great company to work for, salary on time

Cons

Demanding work and expects excellence

2
avatar
Crossover for Work Response
8mo
Glad to hear it’s a great fit and that pay’s been smooth. And yes—the bar is high by design. Thanks for the 5 stars and for leaning into the challenge.
2.0
30 Jul 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Crossover does require work from home. For many, this is a good thing and, for me, helped productivity. The salary is good, but depending upon your country's tax situation it might not be as good as it seems on the surface.

Cons

Where do I start? I tried to be objective with my 2-star rating; Crossover isn't unethical or stealing from their employees or anything like that. However, for a seasoned professional, be warned... I joined in one of the Very High Dollar executive-level positions being driven by their desire to acquire 50+ companies in the near term. I'm in the US. As such (and I knew this going in), the tax consequences for being a contractor are non-trivial. There's also the consideration that you must fund any perks yourself - healthcare, retirement, etc. While the salary is generous enough to do that, it's not as shiny as it seems on the surface. Your mileage may vary depending upon your home country. What I really disliked: Constant tracking/ justification of work stream. Seriously. As others have pointed out, it's difficult to actually *get* credit for a full work week without working extra. Especially in some of the higher-level, more 'creative' positions such as architect, product management, etc. there's minimal or no opportunity to review or think over things. For me, I work in bursts followed by small distractions in which I'm running the problems in the background of my thoughts. A variety of coworkers and management in my history have almost universally commented about the volume of good work I produce. Even my peers at Crossover had no problem with the quantity or quality of my production. However, their tracking software and systems simply don't credit anything other than linear, constant "work". This was bad for me, resulting in me working extra, reworking things as I attempting to change my processes, "faking" it, or simply working longer to attempt to make my hours. I also felt bad for some of the more junior or "factory" positions. It really is tracked by the minute, with lots of incentive to find "problems" with productivity. This is really a thinly-veiled method of wringing blood out of a turnip, by finding flaws or gaps and essentially docking pay. Yeah, the salaries are good but the amount of ancillary work that goes into making "real" hours is awful, and I felt like a chump contributing to it. I had to quit for my sanity.

1585
avatar
Crossover for Work Response
7y
We appreciate your review. Our wages are paid in USD, so it's not going to be as competitive in high tech markets like San Francisco or Boston in the United States where software development is ultra-competitive. However, wages for the same jobs are very competitive in other US cities and outside the US. Sometimes these wages can be 5-6x the local average. Our business model is unique and isn't for everyone. We aren't trying to be like everyone else. The future of work is being redefined. We pride ourselves in being a pioneer in this new paradigm. If you want to know more about this work model, you can read about it here: https://medium.com/@crossoverforwork/the-factory-model-enabling-massive-scale-across-business-functions-98b18ad574f8
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All