Leadership Ego Over Engineering Culture - Senior Software Engineer Observe.AI Employee Review

1.0
May 20, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Still has a few genuinely talented engineers and good problems to work on

Cons

Observe.AI’s biggest problem right now is leadership culture. Over the last year, the company has turned into a very political, optics-driven place where leadership keeps changing direction every few months and everyone just scrambles to justify the latest idea from the top. Actual execution matters less than visibility and staying aligned with the right people. There’s a certain engineering leader who behaves like nobody is allowed to question him, regularly lashes out at people in public discussions, and creates an environment which portrays everyone is inferior across teams. The unfortunate part is that leadership seems fully aware of it and still enables the behavior because results and optics matter more than culture. A lot of strong engineers and managers have already left, and many more are mentally checked out. You can feel the morale drop every quarter. Instead of fixing the root problem, leadership keeps pretending this is just “high performance culture.” The company still has talented people, but the environment has become increasingly political, exhausting, and toxic for anyone who values collaboration or healthy engineering culture.

Explore other reviews about Observe.AI

5.0
Jun 12, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great customer success and account management Good executive team. Even the CEO knew my name and roll and recognized my successes. Stock options available to earn while getting vested

Cons

Pivots in go to market strategy consistently No consistent sales strategy. Every AE had their own sales strategy. As a challenger sales model guy, this was lacking. Moving away from Indirect Channel Sales (while companies like Poly, Boost and others are doubling down in this specific go to market strategy). No 401k match Unlimited PTO (which sounds great, but you never accrue PTO earned)

5.0
Jun 1, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

This has been an incredible opportunity so far. Being involved in the entire lifecycle process and owning the delivery of AI Agents is a very satisfying and rewarding feeling. This type of opportunity is very rare to come across - learnings are through the roof. Definitely a very hot role - AI role at a fast growing AI Startup with a ownership and insane amount of learnings. Amazing culture.

Cons

Workload can be a lot sometimes. But comes with great learnings, and satisfaction. Work life balance can be better... but then again, its a startup.

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