Where do I even begin:
- Your interview is a joke. Your real work is 100% bug fixing.
- Your appraisals are random and based on whether top management likes you or not. It has nothing to do with your work and performance.
- How you move up the ladder is determined by the order - white skin, white accent, girl/woman, IIT/IIMs, others. Any permutation and combination of the 1st 3 will ensure that you get ESOPs and a big fat salary. If you fall into ‘Others' though, you might as well quit, instead of suffering, getting frustrated and then leaving with nothing to show for it.
- There are NO experienced employees to learn from. You will have to teach yourself, or learn from other inexperienced employees.
- The ENTIRE founding team has left the company in less than a year. Good, hard working people who spent years building the product got nothing in return and were either terminated or left out of frustration.
- 4 years ago, we were told the company would grow from less than 10 to 100 in 3 months. After 4 years, the company has struggled to reach even 80 employees.
- It doesn’t matter what you’ve contributed to the company or how long you’ve been there. You must remember that you don't matter. You are only there to make the founders richer. And if the founders favour you, you can claim to be a founding member too, even if you’ve only been there for a year or 2.
- When asked for product feedback, if your feedback is not liked, you will receive emails saying 'Idiot, don't give stupid suggestions and use your brain'. This is how the founders address employees.
- There is a no-lunch policy. You can't go out for lunch or take your team out for lunch, even if you've made a major release and want to celebrate. It's not allowed. You will be taken aside and reprimanded. Even while eating in the pantry, if the founders feel there is important work, you are expected to leave your lunch and do the work till it's fixed.
- I have often heard the founders say 'If I am paying them money, they should work'. This means nights, weekends, weekdays, holidays or any other time the founders deem "necessary”. At one point, the founders even considered calling employees on weekends to take typing lessons to type and code faster, to ship faster.
- No work/life balance AT ALL. How will 2 guys who have no social lives or social dynamic ever understand work/life balance? Having fun at work is frowned upon. There is not even a library for employees to read and learn from. Nothing. No skill development. Just sit and fix bugs all day.
- You are expected to work at least 9 hours a day, but this could go up to 12-14 hours. And after this, if you show up late to work, your salary will be reduced.
- You will work on ridiculous tasks that have no research, validation or thought. They are merely dreamed up by the founders, and you are expected to build it. And once you work on and build this ridiculous feature, it will either not go live, or you will have to rework it entirely because the founders suddenly feel like ‘it doesn'ts works’.
- The company has no vision or plan for the future. The big goal is 'Make money'. That is the central driving force at BrowserStack. The goal is to make the founders and partners richer, while you, the slave, get tired, disrespected, frustrated and eventually burned out.
- No matter what you build, even 50% will not go live, because the overall skill level of PMs is very very low. Inexperienced PMs who have NEVER coded or designed will instruct you on how to code and design.
- Do not trust HR at all. They will lie to your face with sweet talk. None of your concerns really matter. Remember, you are only there to make the "founding partners" rich.
