The story is always in the footnote.
A job description is a sales document. Most of what's worth knowing about a company you might join is in the filings, the transcripts, and the way the org chart has shifted in the last fourteen months.
Footnote compiles personal employer diligence on the company behind your offer, drawn from sources we can name and verify. It is not a recommendation — it is the analyst-quality memo careful operators write for themselves at three in the morning.
Senior individual contributors
Evaluating an offer at the staff, principal, or director band. Where the offer letter is a starting point, not the answer.
Career coaches & advisors
Stop running the same Glassdoor passes for every client. Run a research-grade brief, deliver it under your own name, and track every one from your desk.
Investors & operators
A read of a company's hiring pulse, equity discipline, and middle-manager attrition — without paying expert-network rates.
Recruiters running searches
Brief your candidates with sources. Brief yourself on the employer before the kickoff call.
- 1.
We name every source.
Every claim in your brief carries a citation we can defend out loud — and a brief we can't ground doesn't ship.
- 2.
We don't paraphrase numbers.
Quarterly revenue is quarterly revenue. We use the exact figure from the filing, not the trending narrative.
- 3.
We tell you what we couldn't read.
If a transcript hasn't dropped or a filing is delayed, we say so — and we lower the brief's confidence band accordingly.
- 4.
We don't have insiders.
Public data, public filings, public peer comp. If you're looking for tips, you're in the wrong place.
One number, seven weighted components — every brief follows the same pipeline from primary sources to a verdict you can act on.
Collect
Pull filings, wage bands, leadership records, and the public record for your target company and role.
Verify
Cross-check every figure against primary sources — no narrative paraphrase, no anonymous reviews.
Score
Composite verdict from seven weighted components — organizational health, leadership, strategy, alumni outcomes, promotion velocity, skills, and role-specific risk. Compensation is judged separately, against the certified market wage band. The methodology page shows the full decomposition.
Write
Assemble a single-page brief with scripts, questions, and citations you can use in the room.
If we can't cite it, it isn't in the brief. Named registries we read every day:
The company's own filings
What it reports about revenue, risk, leadership, and insider activity
Certified federal wage records
The pay employers actually file with the government, by role and metro
Earnings calls
Management commentary cross-checked against the filings
The public record
Layoff notices, litigation, and workforce signals reviews can't verify
Found something? Tell us at hello@usefootnote.com.
Encryption in transit and at rest
TLS for every request; encrypted storage for brief inputs and outputs.
Public data only
No company is contacted on your behalf. No insider channels.
Least privilege
Scoped access for subprocessors; audit logging on admin actions.
Your data stays yours
Delete briefs or your entire account from settings — we honor within seven days.
For press inquiries, embargoed briefings, or to request a sample brief, email press@usefootnote.com.
Footnote produces research briefs for informational and decision-support purposes. We are not a registered investment adviser. See our terms of use for the long version.