Got to to be in the "in crowd" to do interesting work and get promotion, and watch your back - Software Engineer Red Hat Employee Review

1.0
6 May 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Working remotely means you don't have to meet any of the "egos" personally. It is good to work for a company where everything is open source, from your desktop, mail client/developer tools, to the code you're developing or supporting. This makes a refreshing change from proprietary companies.

Cons

If you work remotely be prepared to get routinely passed over for everything, not in the office means you're effectively invisible. Much of the engineering work is just bug fixing, even principal developers seem to do little else. If you want the interesting development work, you have to do something to be noticed, and then be prepared to back stab your way through the queue of people for that coveted work. Then you'll invariably have to deal with the egos, and Red Hat has a lot of engineers with ego problems. Work-life balance can be frustrating. I often get to work past midnight. Not that you'll spend the entire time working, rather waiting for the baroque bureaucracy to complete. Personal growth: zero.

Explore other reviews about Red Hat

5.0
3 June 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Quite of freedom to explore and experiments

Cons

Reorgs are quite often lately

3.0
4 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Good team culture and work-life balance if you have the right management chain - Remote work if you're not close to an office - Leadership transparency and willingness to hear feedback

Cons

- Constant re-orgs without strategy are destabilizing - Manager pool is very mixed in terms of experience and skill - Poor role definition can lead to surprises at quarterly review time - Layoffs/reductions have had a chilling effect - Lower salaries compared to competitors

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