Pros
1. Good work-life balance - if there is anything to gloat about with Qlik, it is the work-life balance. We're a predominantly remote company and therefore so long as you're getting your work done, you have plenty of free time to indulge your personal life and pursue other interests. 2. The Pay - pretty decent compensation and benefits although nothing to write home about. The salary met my expectations and is competitive with other employers in my area. 3. Choose your own adventure - maybe it's just my experience at Qlik but I feel like they give you free reign to work on passion projects so long as it adds value to the company. This probably has something to do with the limited overhead of a remote work environment but it allows you some freedom to escape the monotony of daily job function. 4. The technology - the company actually has a pretty good piece of software that can do some cool things with analytics. I'm constantly surprised by the product and what it's capable of doing for our customers.
Cons
1. Sterile Corporate Culture - when I originally came to Qlik, they spoke so much about our 'Swedish' roots which drove our corporate culture. Although that may have been true in the past, Qlik is now an American, middle aged software company which feels much closer to Generic Corporation A than some Lund University start-up. In the few times you leave your private island and go to headquarters, you'll find yourself asking what the culture of Qlik even is. Ex-IBM/Oracle/SAP/Microsoft etc. sales people have taken over the company and make it feel like a soulless, revenue-oriented corporate entity more focused on who'll make President's Club than customer success. The company feels devoid of life and dynamism. 2. Empty Vision - outside of making money, I have no idea what Qlik's long-term corporate vision is at this point. Each year leadership performs an exercise to determine vision but most points revolve around sales revenue and operational changes are almost never actually implemented. R&D is isolated heavily from the rest of the company and communication chains with leadership are fractured due to the remote nature of most of the employees. 3. Tripping over our own feet - Qlik's worst enemy is itself. Despite having a great product we consistently struggle with internal politics and management bureaucracy which when combined with remote employees makes it hard to implement any real operational changes. Most people just keep doing what they've always done even as the market fluxes in front of us the entire time. 4. Prioritizing Aesthetics over Substance - Qlik is a company in love with how it looks vs. what it actually does. Sales constantly talks about selling the 'art of the possible', a cute euphemism which is less "fake-it-till-you-make-it" and more "fake-it-till-you-sell-it". In a crowded space like analytics, you have to provide hard substance to customers to stand out. I feel like Qlik lacks a lot of tangible substance within the company. Everything looks great until you take a peak under the covers.
