everything, sales managers are, toxic, unprofessional, condescending, favouritism, lack basic communication skills, lack basic leadership skills, people with no experience in leadership are leading. worst manager experience.
The work is creative, cutting edge, challenging high-velocity and new. The culture is mind over matter and anti-beurocratic. There are decades worth of experience mentoring you on difficult problems. Working at a startup isn't for everyone, but if you feel pressure is a privilege this is the place. Diamonds are made here!
Cons
Sometimes we feel "understaffed" but honestly, it's because the bar is high and I'm grateful for that.
You get a paycheque, but other than that, pretty much nothing.
Cons
This place has no real management, and nobody cares about or even sees your contributions. There are effectively no review cycles. There are two founding engineers with inflated egos who claim all the authority to tell people what to do and randomly take over or close other people’s PRs. They brought in some guy, presumably to fix some of the above, but his only apparent interest is replacing the workforce with his own people, which I’ve seen happen too many times throughout my career. This typically doesn’t end well.
The tech stack is extremely trivial and boring. There aren’t any interesting projects; it’s all just shoveling data around and calling LLMs. Using an async task processor is about as complex as things get, and only a privileged few are even allowed to touch that without offending egos.
Talking to product pretty much felt like interacting with a 14-year-old.
In summary: one big kindergarten.
Spellbook Response
4mo
Appreciate you sharing your perspective, although it is disappointing to hear. We make every effort to recognize our team's contributions and create energy, whether through our kudos channel, during company meetings or 1:1, and leverage our biannual review cycles as an additional opportunity for managers to highlight individual successes. We have an incredible team that brings a wealth of diverse experience and skills, working together without egos to tackle new challenges each day, solve customer pain points with comical speed, and review PRs that focus on progress rather than perfection. Sounds like we weren't the right fit for you, but we wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours.