During the final interview, I asked about all the negative reviews on Glassdoor and what they have to say about them. They suggested a lot has changed since (even though some are reasonably recent) and then of major concern, the COO suggested that the recent negative reviews were fake and they had been targeted by competitors in an effort to tarnish their reputation. This does not seem true and seems to be a cop-out. The COO Katie said she disputes the accuracy of some of these reviews and that they are highly blown. They pivoted to then talk about the employee engagement survey and having a people and culture manager now, rather than acknowledging and demonstrating clear learning from the ongoing and recent concerns of former employees. Maybe they have made big efforts to change, but it just seemed more dismissive than substantive to me. I see there are suddenly a bunch of positive reviews from current employees all on 29 March, the day after I turned down the job, including from the leadership team...does not seem organic. Perhaps a push to up the average rating score and drown out negative reviews. Other key reasons why I turned down the offer include - repeated assertion that they are a 'startup' as though it gives them a license to expect long working hours of employees, and to normalize having a high turnover rate. They are 7 years old so have been around for a while now. - vagueness they had when I asked about the attrition rate, and seeming hesitancy to reveal this - suggestion from them that if you try and assert a preference to start work at 9am you aren't really willing to put the work in they need for a 'startup' and don't understand the importance of product meetings. On the contrary, I understood the importance of them such that I wanted to be sure I could be available to be at those meetings every day. They pushed this 'be your own boss' thing so much during the interviews, especially when I asked about how they ensure the work-life balance of staff, yet they criticized my request to start work at 9am where possible. This aligns with many previous reviews in terms of the issue of 'say one thing, do another'. Very inflexible too. - their request that a contract be signed with less than one business day to review it, and failure to provide necessary supplementary documentation to complete that contract - they expected me to start work even if the laptop and equipment had not yet arrived, to join workshop days by phone. The process felt rushed. - their suggestion after doing such extensive interviews and after offering me the role that perhaps I actually wasn't right for the role because I wasn't willing to work the exact hours they wanted/didn't understand their ethos, and I asked too many clarifying questions (which they couldn't really give examples of) -unlike at other true startups where and equity/ESOP agreement would be negotiated and agreed from the outset, they said it wasn't negotiable, and would be finalized after probation. But normally a vesting schedule would account for a probationary period through a 'cliff' anyway. Puts candidate at risk of disadvantageous strike price too. Again, inflexible. - former employee confirmed the negative reviews around a toxic culture and strongly suggested declining the offer unless really had no other options -a lot of the 'top-grading' questions in the interviews were repeats of information I had already sent through in written format, which showed a lack of preparation on their end. It was unnecessarily duplicitous and wasted a lot of time. -I applied through their own WORK180 job board and my application got lost somehow due to administrative errors in a handover of a recruitment processes. Interview detail: 3 rounds of interviews. First with reporting manager, then had to prepare a case study for Head of Product and Head of Engineering on features they would implement to improve the jobs board (free consulting), then presented that back in 1.5 hour long second interview, which included a plethora of behaviour and values-based questions. Then another 1.5 hour interview with the COO. The 'top-grading' style of interview is excessively comprehensive, going all the way back to high school and what you liked and didn't like about that, through to assessing your previous managers' strengths and weaknesses. Overall - I did not like the taste of their culture that I got. Please read the negative reviews- there are a lot of them. Take heed of those warnings because even without joining, I could at least see where some of those sentiments came from. It seems the Head of Product/WORK180 would have preferred an unassertive 'yes-person' for this role. What is most disheartening is the dissonance between what they are supposedly all about in terms of supporting women to thrive in the workplace (a great mission) vs. how they actually operate and what they seem to expect of their own employees.