The technology is unparalleled. The place has its problems, but management is working on fixing them.... - Senior Software Engineer Skyera Employee Review

4.0
13 June 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Even the worst detractors in the other reviews agree on one thing, and I think that's the crux of what makes me get up and go to work everyday. The techonology is simply amazing. No company has ever managed to successfully cram so much space into 1U, ever. Period! The hardware team is simply genius, in that regard! And the product is vertically integrated. Everything from the controllers to the chassis to the software is home grown. A few months back, I would totally agree that the work hours were hectic. And, Saturdays were non-existent. But, anyone who signed up for working in a 100 people start-up, in the bay area, signed up for atleast a short stint of crazy work, until the product GAs (For God's sake, even big companies have forced employees to come on Saturday, for months at a time, for the sake of GA). If you wanted a 9-5 work, I think, software engineering in Silicon valley is simply not the career for you. But, after the product GAed, the work is finally coming to a normal pace, the saturdays are off, and the schedules are reasonable. There have been some good developments in the recent past. Some bad apples have been thrown out, and the recently hired VP of Engineering has finally brought a sense of methodical and systematic thinking and scheduling to the place. One consequence of that is, the deadlines, although still agressive, seem more realistic, and some projects that were tailor-made for specific customers got tossed out, which was the right thing to do. The CEO is highly technical, and has a good vision for the future. Although he might seem a little hard to convince, I've seen people achieve success in that regard by being persistent and providing evidence to support your claim.

Cons

The employee perks, including health insurance and 401K match need to be revamped, to make it more attractive for new-comers. Thanks to all the bad mouthing in glass door and other public forums so far, by disgruntled employees, it has become a little difficult to hire the right people for the job (which is one of the reason, I am writing this review, to set records straight).

Explore other reviews about Skyera

5.0
22 Jan 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

there were a great culture and team of some amazing individuals

Cons

the cons are that the covid hit and its a lot harder to convince people why our product was worth investing in

4.0
21 June 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Skyera has created one hell of a product. Hardware is beyond any storage company has ever achieved. The product can cram up to (or more) than 100X storage in 1U form factor than some of the competitors and at much less the cost. There is a lot of very interesting work left to be done. This creates a tremendous learning opportunity for people who want to grow technically. My guess is Skyera can easily use many many more software engineers. Some of the other challenges that create great learning opportunity is "how to do more in less" as in "how to get more IOPS with less CPU, memory etc.", how to work closely with hardware, challenging the common assumption etc. . Most other storage companies are really software companies with big-honking-off-the-shelf-hardware where these technical challenges are non-existent and hence, less learning and more of the traditional stuff. Some VPs are really good. Especially, the new ones with extensive software background.

Cons

Like every place I have worked in my life, this place has challenges too. Many things can use improvement including better planning. A disadvantage of having great hardware brains at work can be under-estimation on software side. Fortunately, both the above seem to be improving. The company has been trying to do too much with too little people. It would be great if some use cases can be dropped. That will create more realistic schedules. CEO should scale better by more delegation. It's improving but more is desired

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