Cockroach Labs Reviews

In my opinion, there is a lot of pretentiousness and arrogance in the engineering department, especially for the senior members and management. As an engineer with only a few years experience, asking questions and trying to seek guidance was a difficult task to achieve. Often times if I were to ask a "stupid" question, I received a strong sense of being looked down upon and judged before being given a hesitant answer that only answered my question at the surface level. In other words, they didn't care about me or my growth as a software engineer. The "flex Fridays" are heavily advertised, as having your Friday to work on other projects, catch up on work, or take off completely. But it's really a ploy to entice candidates to accept the offer (disclaimer, I am strictly speaking as a software engineer). Being a startup, a lot is expected of you. Long hours, being logged on well into the evening hours, and working weekends. This would all be fine if you knew what you were getting into, but it's never said, only expected. Honestly, they preach a work life balance, which is even more frustrating since the reality is nothing of the sort. Like I said in the pros, if software engineering is your only interest, you're a software development wiz, or you just absolutely love designing and thinking about databases, by all means, this is for you. But if you're someone who is looking for a job that will give you back what you put in, be cautious. I advise you to ask skeptical and challenging questions in your interview process. And ask what team you will be joining and make sure you speak with your manager before accepting the position to ensure you will have a healthy working relationship.

As of Feb 2023: - Two days in the office per week for employees within a 40 mile radius of an office, with limited exceptions. - Remote hires have stopped happening with limited exceptions. - CEO says the pandemic is over, which is flat out wrong. I personally know three people who have gotten COVID in the last month alone. As of September 2023: - CEO declared that we are "at war" and used some pretty creepy language to describe it. Even included a picture of a battleship in his presentation. - Mandatory 3 days per week in office for employees within 40 miles of an office. - The flex Friday benefit we had, one of the main reasons I joined, is now gone for the engineering department. Seems like upper management doesn't value the 4 day work week anymore, despite the blog post we wrote about it. - CEO openly suggested we start working longer days and weekends in order to achieve the company/his goals. Everything has been turned on its head here. It's like a fever dream. Middle management is full of brown-noses who only wish to toe the company line and support the RTO policy for the sake of "team collaboration" and "team productivity" and "reducing friction". So you throw a bunch of people, only some of whom seem not to work well with each other, into the same room 3 days a week, in hopes that you'll get what, exactly? Commuting wastes time and money. Being away from home makes childcare difficult. RTO policies force employees to make a lot of difficult adjustments in their lives. Remote employees feel edged out, as if they're an afterthought. They're a dead end to the evolution of employees at this company. And they feel stuck, because so many other stupid companies (but not all companies) have this draconian office-first mentality. Tech workers know they can do their job from anywhere. The brief interruptions on zoom meetings are not enough cause to disrupt your employees' work patterns.