Great company doing meaingful work - Anonymous employee Descartes Labs Employee Review

5.0
24 June 2020
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I have never worked with smarter peers than here at Descartes Labs and with the recent changes in leadership (our interim CEO was also fantastic) we're finally getting competent direction and governance to go with it. Remote sensing is a super interesting domain that is rapidly evolving as new tech is developed and new sensors come online. Meaningful work that can actually make a difference in the world. Geospatial data is highly underused and can help in numerous meaningful applications such as climate change, disease monitoring and forecasting, and ecological monitoring. Very challenging technical problems - geospatial data makes other people's big data problems seem like a joke. Awesome and humbling to work with people like our CTO Mike Warren who can tackle these sorts of problems over lunch.

Cons

Still shrugging off the legacy of bad management. Very complex domain can be overwhelming for some.

Explore other reviews about Descartes Labs

5.0
1 May 2023
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Colleagues in a league of their own - some of the best in their field in the whole world, and widely sought after. Remote work, flexible work schedule. Incredible technology that is the leader in its category.

Cons

Not a con for all, but very much startup life with plenty of challenges to work on.

2.0
7 June 2024
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Opportunities to work on a variety of interesting problems in remote sensing -Helpful, friendly, and knowledgeable technical colleagues provided good learning opportunities and a collaborative atmosphere -Working from home is nice -Good benefits

Cons

When new management took over changes naturally had to happen. Some of the decisions they made, however, were mind-bogglingly uninformed and demonstrated a clear lack of understanding of who at the company provided value and who was dead weight. Additionally, they removed the four-day work week without any justification beyond "it looks bad to the shareholders". This was a benefit many of us weighed heavily when considering our initial job offer and felt effectively like a ~25% pay cut. When these feelings were communicated, we were brushed off in a tone-deaf manner. Beyond these issues with the new management, certain portions of the company seem to lack any semblance of direction or vision, with middle management / leadership being infatuated with buzzwordy nonsense instead of being driven by principled technical ideas that may be market differentiators.

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