Company details

HEADCOUNT

500-999

ORG TYPE

Startup

SECTOR

Retail & Consumer

WEBSITE

http://www.whatnot.com/

About the company

Whatnot runs a live-shopping marketplace where sellers stream and buyers purchase in real time, across categories like collectibles and fashion. The company has scaled quickly since launching in 2019 and hires across engineering, product, operations, and go-to-market teams. Whatnot’s careers site includes a published interview outline and an explicit “Emerging talent” pitch for students and new grads. Current postings show dedicated tracks for internships and new graduate engineering roles.

Locations and presence

Whatnot is headquartered in Los Angeles and operates with hubs across the US and Europe. Public company pages also describe a “remote co-located” approach across the US, UK, Ireland, Poland, and Germany.

Palpable Score

71.4

/ 100

Whatnot offers real early-career entry through internships, new grad engineering roles, and sales development hiring, backed by a public interview process outline. The score is held back by uneven candidate experience reports and limited hard data on junior retention and promotion outcomes beyond reviews and a small set of anecdotes.

Pillar 1: Early-career access

Score

15.8

/ 20

The company advertises a dedicated “Software Engineer, 2026 New Grad” role and labels it under “Engineering New Grads.”
Whatnot also lists internships and an “Early Talent Community” for software engineering, plus early-career friendly sales development roles on the main jobs board.
The company’s early-career access is strongest in engineering and sales, with fewer clearly junior-labelled routes across functions like marketing, finance, or people operations.

Pillar 2: Hiring fairness and transparency

Score

13.8

/ 20

The company publishes a step-by-step interview flow on the careers site, including resume review, screens, skills interviews, and a values interview stage.
Whatnot has mixed candidate reports that include both “efficient and well-communicated” loops and slower, more time-consuming case-study processes with vague prompts.
The company uses third-party technical interviews for some early-career engineering candidates, and public feedback shows that the experience quality can vary by interviewer.

Pillar 3: Learning and support

Score

13.5

/ 20

The company’s “Emerging talent” messaging explicitly promises support from experienced mentors while early-career hires ship real projects.
Whatnot’s engineering internship write-up describes onboarding, meaningful project ownership, and close collaboration with mentors rather than “shadow-only” work.
The company does not publicly share a consistent junior ramp plan across roles, such as a standard 30–60–90 day plan, buddy system, or protected learning time.

Pillar 4: Pay fairness and stability

Score

14.8

/ 20

The company publishes a clear compensation range for the 2026 new grad software engineer role, which is rare clarity for early-career candidates.
Whatnot has externally reported pay benchmarks for interns and full-time roles that include hourly intern pay plus stipend details and market-competitive engineering totals.
The company’s careers page lists broad benefits and perks, but salary range visibility is still role-dependent, which limits pay predictability outside the best-documented postings.

Pillar 5: Early-career outcomes

Score

13.5

/ 20

The company has strong broad sentiment on employee review aggregates, including a high “recommend to a friend” rate and a relatively strong “career opportunities” score.
Whatnot’s internship story explicitly references a path toward full-time engineering while describing skills growth and increasing ownership over an eight-month internship.
The company has not published early-career retention rates, promotion timelines, or cohort outcomes; public reporting focuses more on company growth and equity participation than junior progression metrics.