Pros
- Competitive salary in Toronto market - Good business proposition - Smart core engineering team
Cons
The media releases of Gatik show as if this company is the next big thing and is a great place to work for. The reality is quite different. The effective C-suite in this company is the 3 founders + ex C-suite from failed startup(s) - The C-suite has no GENUINE concern about COVID19-related employee safety: a) The entire engineering team was mandated to come to office in the middle of the pandemic for a "whiteboard" meeting b) Company barbecues are held regularly where people are often huddled together in a single room / indoor setting c) Engineers from the US and Canada were flown into a test site where they were neither tested nor isolated before being put together in Airbnbs. One engineer got covid19 on-site - the founders called out the team for "speculating" this as covid amongst themselves before the results came out and not trusting them to do the right thing. And then the management repeatedly misreported the engineer's health, sugar-coating severe symptoms, which have prevented them from returning to work for more than a month. d) There is always a push to get people into the office, even if they don't need to be physically there to get the work done. e) The CEO and another employee from Bay Area flew into Canada on 2 separate occasions and both violated the mandatory 14 day quarantine, because the company "will always be operating in the grey area" as it is "an aggressive startup" and is "comfortable paying the fines". If they are sued, they can always say their work was "essential" because of the nature of work of their clients. f) Two people left/were let go because they were uncomfortable with the company's compliance (or lack thereof) of OHSA standards. - Work-life balance is an alien concept. It is normal for people to be working up to 2 am. You can be called for a remote on-site whenever the upper management decides that the vehicle is available. Friday engineering meetings (at 5:30 pm) often witness members of the C-suite asking each engineer what can be done by Monday. - The C-suite talks about transparency and exhibits a superficial sense of good work culture via office huddles, gifts etc. but underneath it all, it just thinks of employees as tools or means to their ends. Some common occurrences: a) Insulting individuals/sub-teams in front of the entire engineering team for not achieving C-suite's unrealistic goals b) Misrepresenting the true status of company's developments to various parties c) Lying about/hiding the primary cause of an employee's separation and criticizing them in front of the rest of the team after they are gone. - There is hardly any original IP. This company is a wasted opportunity for smart engineers wanting to develop new things. - The C suite has limited technical depth, people skills, project management skills and moral code. Left to them alone, this company is guaranteed to sink. - The attrition rate is high. Over the last half year, about 60% of the engineers have left/were let go, mostly because they were frustrated with this work culture. All senior engineers working on the autonomous stack have resigned.