A rare example of a company that prioritizes employee wellbeing - Senior Software Engineer DigitalOcean Employee Review

5.0
Feb 14, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people, culture, environment; genuinely happy, transparent, and surprisingly laid-back. No BS or sugar-coating to be had, just people passionate about what we do and those we work with. Simple and extremely effective to boost productivity and eliminate any stress from work. There's a constant push to continue doing things better, accepting that perfection doesn't exist but we can do our best without putting pressure on people. I really appreciate that management understands they need to empower their employees in a sustainable manner.

Cons

Not much to share on cons. I've worked for a handful of software companies over a decade, working my way up in scale. There's always something to complain about. I've been waiting for the skeletons to fall out of the closet but after a few months here I have nothing to report. No company is perfect, and if there's nothing to improve on then good talent will leave in search of compelling challenges. I don't see that here. I see a lot of people who are happily engaged in their work at every IC level and a consistent push for improving things. There are things to improve for engineers but nothing swept under the rug. I don't see myself blocked for months/years waiting for other teams to implement features I need or want. There's a good amount of complexity to our engineering processes and efforts are underway to provide further clarity.

Explore other reviews about DigitalOcean

5.0
Mar 30, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Solid engineering team, seems to have found a niche and is working it hard.

Cons

Smaller company, so low in the prestige

2.0
May 18, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- lots of ownership - decent middle management - great teammates - learning a lot - older employees do tend to have competitive RSU grants and salaries

Cons

- tons of legacy systems (10+ years version of Ruby on Rails... 10+ years since some products or services were updated, 0 associated automation to help) - last 2y of leadership has brought on tons of reorgs & changes. Example - recommended PTO days quietly went down, got rid of lots of free snacks, anniversary gifts went down $100s of dollars, plenty of silent layoffs - Senior leadership is focused on 1 thing - getting the stock price up. Has no interest in supporting some of our legacy systems that can prop up new products. - new hires are not fitting into our culture. Inflated titles. Empire building. Awarded for submitting buggy AI Slop code. Encourage working on the weekends. Starting to get toxic.

2
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All