"But... I thought we were friends", in C minor - Software Engineer Power Factors Employee Review

1.0
Jun 28, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- smart, friendly colleagues - hybrid / mostly remote - great lower / mid-level local managers

Cons

You're doing well, you like your team and they like you too. You've had a good annual review a few months ago and a salary increase at the top of the range. You've been with the company for many years and you've made a name for yourself. You feel pretty good about your accomplishments and how people have come to rely on you. You have a lot of work. You're jumping from one thing to the next and you think maybe they should add more people to your team. One day you notice a sync with your director added to your calendar. That's odd, but you don't have too much time to think about it before you join the meeting. The HR lady is there. Your stomach drops and you start breathing irregularly. Is this really happening? Am I somehow dreaming? A few minutes and it's all over. All your accesses are deactivated. Your years and years with the company meant nothing and you have been tossed out to the curb. You're in shock. You pace around your house, your laptop and monitor still on that same desk, now mocking you. You feel dizzy and still hope that maybe it's a dream. You feel like you should sit down and do some work. Who's going to follow up on your projects? Don't they at least want to get all the knowledge you had and nobody else did? You sit down, you get up, you open the fridge, you close the fridge, you sit down again. None of it really registers. You're numb. You make some coffee, and start panic-investigating on LinkedIn. Who's gone? That guy, and that guy, and ... omg... that other guy is also gone? You're still numb. You'll be numb for weeks and will occasionally still hope it's not true. There's no way, right? People liked you. You did good work.

Explore other reviews about Power Factors

5.0
Feb 25, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

People are nice, helpful no politics

Cons

The salary is less with no stock options

1
1.0
Jun 5, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

There are sometimes snacks in the kitchen

Cons

We have had another round of layoffs recently, and it was done in such poor taste that if anyone is taking notes for a revival of The Office, you have my permission to use this material. The layoffs were done in several stages and none of the departures were communicated, so people found out that their colleagues, and sometimes their managers, we gone by trying to write to them and noticing that the user was deactivated. Some people ended up alone in meetings because all of their coworkers were laid off and they didn't know. Several days later (days!), the CEO sent a clearly-AI-generated email to let us know about the layoffs, but it was just typical AI slop. Nothing was announced in a formal meeting. All we got was an AI-generated e-mail telling us that AI was going to improve our productivity so we had to let go of some of the people. I will reiterate, because this says everything about this person: some of our most beloved colleagues are gone, and the entirety of the effort she put into dealing with it is prompting her favorite AI to write a lil bit of word salad. The people who were let go were bright, knowledgeable people, some of whom had been with the company for close to 10 years. They took all of their knowledge with them. Our documentation is not great, and some vital people had already left over the years, so now we have some major gaps in skills and knowledge that were not transferred by people who've left abruptly. In some cases there is only one person left who has the knowledge of an entire system. In some other cases there are no people left that know how a certain system works. Both the CEO and the CTO are flailing while trying to appear tough. They both try to cringely seem cool and caring sometimes, kind of like the "how do you do, fellow kids?" meme. Some jokes that fall flat here and there, and the CEO occasionally remembers to say something about how we are valued, akin to an alien who learned how to human from a book. A note: I was wondering why nobody who's left a bad review crossed the CEO approval box, and it turns out that the option doesn't exist on the Glassdoor web version. That's why it seems like most people are neutral about her.

7
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