Most managers don't have any prior experience in people management. Please do yourself a favor and review profiles of Engineering managers at EvenBrite before considering taking a job here. Be careful of not hurting manager's ego even accidentally and unintentionally, or be ready to be terminated at any minute. Seeing your colleagues suddenly getting disappeared is a norm here.
Communicating indirectly behind the back and in the groups is the accepted practice here. Meetings are used for discovering what other thinks. There is just weird tendency of agreeing as group. People Don't raise genuine issues and express honest opinions as they fear getting isolated and retaliation from rest of the group. Even long-time employees don't speak a word as they are waiting for an IPO to encash their stock options.
It is the worst quality code base I have ever seen in my long career. Accruing technical debt is encouraged as inexperienced managers attempts to direct entry level developers without any planning and design. Much of the code is a monolith and remains unchanged since inception. Tight coupling, circular dependencies and code duplication is common occurrence. Unfortunately in the absence of mentorship and guidance , young developers write best what they can. There are no architects around.
There is no thought leadership other than repeated attempts to induce excitements by announcing birthdays and anniversaries, cheering inter-project movement and celebrating festivals. There is nothing wrong with celebration. However there ia a lot of faux-positivity. Most young employees are attracted by this, free food, shower in the office and relaxed work environment. However there is no real growth and in absence of challenges and mentorhip, there isn't much to learn.
Salary is subpar as compared to average salaries in SF. Beware of those stock options as the strike price is very high. When you are granted $40K of stocks every year, you are getting $65k of options that you can exercise only if you pay $25k in cash. Since it is private equity, you cannot sell your stocks until company goes an IPO or mgmt gets approved investors. It means your money is stuck if you decide to leave. There is no 401k match. no bonuses. No PTOs and no cash payment for PTOs.
Unlimited TTYN policy isn't same as unlimited PTOs. Per CA laws, employees earn PTO/ vacation time and it is your right to spend the way you want. With unlimited time-off, it is on the discretion to your manager to approve your time-off. You may be asked to reduce your vacation, participate into meetings and supporting 'business' during your time-off.
There is no work methodology followed here. Company has recently started introducing Scrum(in 2017) and most teams don't like it. Basically running projects with no focus and hiding failures behind excuses and allegations is the preferred way. Often decisions are based on individual biases without considering any data points. No wonder why many project fails and company is struggling to make profits. Also very few customers bring repeat business and many of themare tired of technology issues and high fees. Management has shifted its strategy to acquire companies as it cannot fix inherent problems and grow organically. Management is aware that without consistent growth company cannot go for IPO.
Performance is reviewed every quarter. When the project fails, engineering manager starts finding a scapegoat, blame failures on that person and fire him. I have seen this pattern repeating numerous times. I have even witnessed people getting extremely positive review in last quarter but fired within a month for performance reasons. Make sure to dine and drink with your group members and build a personal relationship or you are next in the line.
I have seen many il-managed companies in my long career. But this one is the worst. Everyone in middle and top management has an inflated ego.
Other cons - only 1 restroom with 4 lavatories for an office space of 50,000 sq ft and among ~300 people. Long queues in the morning is norm. Loud rock music in the restroom doesn't help so please stop playing it.
It is imposdible to find a conference for next 2 days.
