Dream Job - Engineering Manager AllTrails Employee Review

The people are amazing to work with and almost everyone is enthusiastic about the product. I love working on an app that I use every day. There is no shortage of work or ideas of things to implement. Trail Days are wonderful - getting the first Friday of every month to spend outside testing the app is a lot of fun. Liz the CEO is smart, engaged, transparent and accessible. I think she is doing a great job. The benefits are good including a 5 week sabbatical every 5 years (on top of unlimited PTO).

Priorities can shift quickly. Movement between teams is somewhat stagnant. There is a lot of pressure to move fast with AI.

The company still has a strong brand and a product that resonates with users. There are a handful of hardworking individuals trying to keep things moving despite the chaos. The employees care, but the leadership is clueless.

The biggest issue is leadership. The departures of the CTO, CPO, and Head of Product have left massive gaps that have not been meaningfully addressed. There is no clear product vision, and it shows in the day to day confusion and constant reprioritization. The CEO has not built a cohesive or inspiring culture and, at times, feels like a poor fit for the company’s needs at this stage. Communication from the top lacks clarity and depth, and there is little confidence in long term strategy. Recent leadership decisions have only added to the concern. For example, moving the CMO into a Chief Business Officer role felt abrupt and unclear, and their company wide strategy shared in an all hands was reduced to a single sentence slide which is an accurate reflection of how underdeveloped and vague the current direction is. Unacceptable.