Don’t do it! It’s a medley of insanity and delusion. - Advanced People Skills Engineer Knightscope Employee Review

TL;DR; This is a warning for anyone contemplating working for William Santana Li or Mercedes Soria Li. They're not interested in helping anyone but themselves, let alone secure the nation. They've discovered that seeking entrepreneurial opportunities by preying on the fears of the public or worse, exploiting tragedy, can be quite lucrative for anyone hawking the proverbial snake oil. Take it from me, we were all enticed by the charm of building robotic systems that would impact the world in a positive way; many of us still aspire to do so. However, when the same red flags kept resurfacing time and time again. It became incredibly difficult to ignore. I will be the first to admit, we were all complicit because we had the rare opportunity of working with our friends and at times, our siblings. Knightscope is not a place for you to grow and it was never designed to be. Continue your job search. Find a company that you'll love. Find a leader who is worthy of the title. A leader who earns and reciprocates your respect instead of demand it. Find a culture that aligns with your goals and beliefs. Do not settle for anything less. You'll love what you do! LEADERSHIP • If you don't know already, you should look up what happened in Connersville, Indiana in 2010/2011. The same people who ran and operated "Carbon Motors" are presumably trying to secure the nation now. • There's a woefully misguided white savior mentality. In an all hands, the CEO once presented a dream where he imagined a future headline on the Chicago tribune stating that the governor of Illinois had awarded Knightscope the highest achievable medal of honor for solving Chicago's crime issues. Who knew! All Chicago's social/economic issues could simply be solved by dropping a few $70K/yr robots that are nothing more than a CCTV camera. • Emphasize and expect respect, loyalty and other qualities in others without exhibiting those same qualities themselves. There's some weird type of entitlement that none of us could ever really understand. • Expect all of the benefits of a successful company without providing the appropriate resources and attention in the required areas in order to get there. • There’s a comical lack of knowledge and experience in the areas of : leadership, security, software, hardware, AI, robotics, engineering, marketing and management. This is only exasperated by the aversion to hire subject matter experts and experienced professionals. • There is a juvenile attitude towards collaboration. It's incredibly binary and it inhibits the companies progress. The general consensus is that everyone else is completely stupid or has no idea what they are doing. The company has made so many potential partners into adversaries. • There’s a serious lack of respect for: folks who currently work or have worked for the company, service folks, female employees and vendors whose technology and products are heavily depended on! It not uncommon to be under paid, stressed out or even brought to tears over unreasonable requests if you’re a female employee. It was incredibly disheartening to hear how distraught and disturbed our colleagues were after the CEO revealed his agenda to exclusively purse an all female board right after he had hired almost all of them. Furthermore, it was shocking to witness that whenever employees elected to leave the company. Leadership would go to extreme lengths to ignore and even undermine their accomplishments and contributions to the company. • No humility or self awareness. If you ever get the chance to visit their office, ask about the high attrition rate. I can assure you that the answer will have something to do with how everyone else was not cut out for the startup life or some other absurd excuse absolving any responsibility from their deplorable leadership. COMPANY/PRODUCT • There's no fund-raising strategy. Unless you consider FOMO a strategy. Even worse, it becomes clear why the mission statement is so vague. It really just boils down to metaphorical ambulance chasing. There is no insight or interest in solving any national security problems. It's the equivalent of a toddler attempting to fit everything but a cylinder/sphere into a circular hole. • Most of the time and resources are spent on optics especially when it comes to the machines. Safety is not a primary concern and it is alarming! There have been so many close calls and this is one of the highlights. A few month ago, an engineer engaged in some reckless testing waving a toy assault riffle in the middle of the night. This prompted a rightfully so concerned citizen to call Mountain View PD. In response, Mountain View PD surrounded the building's entrance with guns drawn while employees where still in the building working! After the incident, not a word was uttered by leadership or the responsible party until an apology had to be coerced by one of our coworkers who is a veteran. He expressed his disappointment regarding how the situation and project were being handled given his background. It’s amazing what gets an immediate response from leadership and what doesn’t. • The current business model is flawed considering how much capital it take to bring robotic systems to market and keep them running 24/7. In order to get anywhere close to what is published in the company's sales media, there's a lot of collateral damage experienced by the employees. • No matter how much money is raised, it’s clear that unless there are experienced adults in leadership roles, Knightscope will continue to burn money and people until either the funds, customers, or market patience is depleted. Don’t believe me, everything you need to know is on the SEC website. CAREER • If you were not hired in the first two years of the company, you can keep your ideas and opinions to yourself. Even worse, your work will be under appreciated and unacknowledged due to the lack of general knowledge by the folks barking orders at you. Only specific people are allowed to fail. Failure is such a common trend at Knightscope and it happens more than it should if a scientific approach or just plain common sense was applied. It's equivalent to running a marathon but on a treadmill. • Actively prey on young, talented, inexperienced folks to avoid any push back that experienced professionals would provide in matters of engineering, finance, marketing, sales and management. • There's no career mobility and titles mean absolutely nothing. Make one up and go crazy with it. • Leadership is based on a seniority model that absolutely disregards performance. • Your success is not a priority. Case and point, if you've ever taken a look at the blog posts published by the company. You'll notice that they are all by the same authors. It's not a coincidence.