Amazing Team, Great Work Environment and Steady Growth of Customer Base - Engineering Team Member Sense Street Employee Review

There are many great people working at the company, which makes the day-to-day work environment more enjoyable

The work is very intense and demanding, which in itself wouldn’t necessarily be a problem. However, the company struggles to organize the workload in a sustainable way. Management sets deadlines with clients without considering how realistic they are for the team responsible for delivering the work. As a result, employees are often forced to work at an extremely fast pace, prioritizing quantity over quality. The company frequently encroaches on employees’ personal time. Sometimes there arises an unspoken expectation to work late evenings and weekends — technically it’s “optional,” but in practice it feels mandatory if you want to keep up with the workload or be perceived as committed. This work style is heavily romanticized within the company culture. Simply working the hours you are contracted to work is often not seen as enough. Recognition tends to go to those who constantly work overtime and push themselves far beyond reasonable limits. Leadership (including the CEO and CPO) often speaks about future growth and acquiring new clients. While that may sound exciting from a strategic perspective, for many employees it mainly translates into even more work and pressure which results in a growing feeling that they are working primarily for the company’s success rather than their own development, . At the same time individual ambitions and well-being are not given much consideration. Salaries are relatively low considering the workload and expectations. In some cases, employees are not adequately compensated for the level of responsibility or the qualifications they bring to the role.

- Flat team structure - Innovative and thoughtful team - A serious mentality to building something

The beginning of my time at Sense Street was enjoyable, I worked hard on various projects and was very successful. That said, I struggled for the latter part of my time there. I imagine that a flat structure most likely works for certain companies but I found the extent to which this was the case in this company to be very difficult. The complexity of what I was working on was very high level and very technical and I felt more and more isolated and without recourse to any guidance or even someone I could talk through my challenges with. I was clearly capable of doing the job but I felt that if I did not deliver results immediately I was sidelined to a greater and greater extent. In terms of the culture, I found the CEO to be ostensibly charismatic but an extremely strong personality who could switch from calm and collected in one minute to frustrated and irritable the next. I overheard the CEO using an extremely aggravated tone with team members on more than one occasion (one team member was reduced to tears at least once). This, in my opinion, lead to an apprehensiveness of certain team members in interacting with the CEO and an uneasy mood in the office.