Unbabel Reviews

3.4

61% would recommend to a friend

(169 total reviews)

Vasco Calais Pedro

59% approve of CEO

41% positive business outlook

Unbabel has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 169 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Unbabel employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

169 reviews
1.0
6 Apr 2023

Exploitation at its finest

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Everyone aside from Leadership is suffering so you form close bonds based on the mutual struggle.

Cons

It's a classic story, really...Outcast founder receives VC funding - gets highlights and becomes obsessed with all the attention he never got only to drain company funds to keep that alive. Every company decision is based on emotion and the peter-pan syndrome of the CEO who will never be the visionary he desperately wants to prove to everyone he is. When you have a leadership team full of yes people and quickly let go of anyone who dares to value reason or common sense that mentality trickles down into the team and unfortunately results in peoples suffering to pay for the reckless decisions made by an irresponsible executive team. Why spend 1M on a retreat in October and lay people off in January using the economic downturn as cause when the economy was just as bad in October. Why spend millions to acquire additional companies when you haven't properly integrated the company you acquired a year ago? It's all politics and wannabes. No one with integrity and an actual spine would stand for such a lack of regard for decency. Not to mention the product, which has been stagnant since 2018, can't compete with what competitors are providing.

2.0
13 Dec 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- the project is awesome and revolutionary - sometimes the atmosphere is joyful and the company is full of interesting people

Cons

- do more, faster, always: there is no work-life balance at all - nobody cares about you and there is absolutely no respect for each others time - management has no organization skills at all - there are way too many young and inexperienced employees, which leads to some parts of the work being badly developed

1.0
6 Apr 2020

Avoid at all costs

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Smart, energetic teammates - Pleasant office - Good brand, at least locally in Lisbon

Cons

-The company's unsexy, uninspiring move from natural language processing to customer service (in no universe are "AI-powered" call centers a noble thing...) - Bloated management teams (there are multiple senior managers with only one report) -Micromanagement EVERYWHERE -Ruthless competition between managers. This has huge negative repercussions for team morale and cross-functional projects - Lack of clarity in the workplace -Career paths in name only - Unjust range of salaries (similarly qualified employees in the same position can be earning vastly different pay) - Completely unprofessional firing protocols (HR has been known to prevent employees from claiming government subsidies; "troubled" employees rarely given the opportunity to improve)

avatar
Unbabel Response
6y
Hi former Unbabeler, Thank you for writing this review on Glassdoor. We mean it, as we can only get better through honest and constructive feedback. We’re not sure if we understand what you mean in regards to a move from NLP to customer service; NLP is at the heart of what we do and continues to be so. The areas where our translation layer can be applied do not negate the use of NLP. Eventually, the world’s translation layer will be globally used in all sorts of interactions. Concentrating now on customer support allows us to grow within a very important business need that most companies in the world have - to reach out and engage with their global customers even if they don’t share a common language. Micromanagement and competition is not at all aligned with Unbabel’s values, and we are always keen to help improve these kinds of situations . We are sorry to hear that you had this experience and felt that it was not addressed while you were at Unbabel. We encourage a culture of continuous feedback and the People team have regular check-ins with managers and each employee in order to support and help to facilitate this feedback. When you mention lack of clarity in the workplace, we assume it’s regarding OKRs and deliverables. We are happy to let you know that we have now a tool to manage this, on a quarterly basis, assuring that the teams have better clarity on their goals, as well as full visibility on what everyone across the business is working on. Also, we always aim to be as fair as possible in regards to salaries. This is something that is important to us and we review on an annual basis and remain attentive to any possible salary discrepancies. Finally, regarding exits, unfortunately we’ve had to make some really tough decisions, but we always ensure that we manage these difficult situations legally, professionally and in a humane way, making sure we support our employees in every way we can. We sincerely wish you the best of luck in your new challenge, The Unbabel People Team
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Glassdoor has 260 Unbabel reviews submitted anonymously by Unbabel employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Unbabel is right for you.