Great marketing, average company - Software Engineer Toptal Employee Review

3.0
Feb 15, 2023
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

High pay, unlimited PTO, reimbursement policies and opportunity to work on big projects along lots of smart people. Culture inside the teams themselves was great, in contrast to what happens across the company as whole.

Cons

Work pressure is high and people work after working hours, even after midnight to deliver projects. There are too much attributions for engineers. Your daily work as an engineer involves: the expertise you were hired for + the stack out of your expertise (AKA everyone is expected to be fullstack regardless of their role) + frequent hotfixes + reviewing a massive quantity of PRs (your team's and external teams) + dealing with demands from people in other teams and engaging on discussions across lots of Slack channels + leadership skills. There is a rating system for your competency called TopSteps, which had rates going from "below expectations" to "blowing away expectations". Lately they changed the base rating from "meeting expectations" to "working towards expectations" because "everyone has something to improve". Think of a motivational culture. Transparency was lacking a lot lately too. They made us think that layoffs were unlikely and froze raises "to avoid them". Then they called a meeting to talk about "team restructuring", merging some teams, which seemed unreasonable. It all made sense afterwards, when the layoffs happened. Freezing raises to pay less on the compensation for laid-off people, merging teams because every team would be a lot smaller. Layoffs were brutal. Not all people had the chance to understand what was happening. It was announced over a 10 minutes meeting. People who couldn't attend that had to ask ex-teammates privately to get any clue of what would happen next. Some managers didn't know their engineers were fired until moments after it happened.

Explore other reviews about Toptal

5.0
May 28, 2026
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

1. Excellent Pricing 2. Geneue Big and Global Clients 3. Pricing at your Choice 4. Top Class Payment System 5. Job Matcher who listen to you when and where required. 6. Always Real Job not a Job where person working as Freelancer to some international client and post job which you do during your parttime.

Cons

I don't find any Cons for TopTal Freelancer Platform

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Toptal Response
3w
Thank you for your positive feedback. We appreciate you taking the time to share your experience.
1.0
Jun 1, 2026
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

None. Avoid. This is a sinking ship.

Cons

As others have mentioned, the leadership of Toptal is very poor. Constant changes of direction, unstable leaders, a product with tons of competition. They also have extremely high turnover. Even if you get a job here, you'll be looking again in under a year.

3
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Toptal Response
3w
Thank you for your feedback. We appreciate you bringing this to our attention, as your input helps us improve.
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