Pros
HelioCampus is a remote first company and in my experience as a US employee, there is a lot of schedule flexibility. One of my favorite things about this company was the ability for me to step away from my computer to hit a gym session or get a doctors appointment in during the work day without having to use PTO because I could make up the hours later or earlier in the day. Another advantage is that PTO is given in full up front rather than accrued, although this does mean that it is not paid out upon departure. Additionally, they do a decent 401k match with no vesting period, which I find incredible. I worked with mainly individual contributers, but the vast majority of coworkers I interacted with were extremely kind people and truly made the work enjoyable. I live local to one of the offices and enjoyed how many events and opportunities there were to connect, while also realizing my experience would be extremely different if I lived elsewhere or had obligations such as children that would prevent me from attending events outside of classic office hours. I was able to gain a lot of experience starting as an entry level developer at HelioCampus and would recommend it to those that are early in their career or happy where they are at. I will note that I would not recommend it for those looking to grow in their role or climb the ranks in their career path. Approx. 1/3 of the company is offshore, primarily in Türkiye. This leads to some pros and cons. The pros being that I got to learn so much culture, language, and gastronomy from my coworkers. It was amazing to be able to speak additional languages and learn about a different country as water cooler banter. The cons include obvious things such as time zone difficulty and connectivity difficulty for calls. Some of the less common ones include: disjointed teams, US employee fears of being laid off for cheaper labor abroad, and some skill/knowledge gaps (mainly due to the fact that clients are US Higher Ed institutions).
Cons
I see three major areas that HelioCampus struggles with: culture, product direction, and staffing/turnover. Although there are a lot of women and a handful of LGBTQ+ employees in the company, there are still individuals that repeatedly make problematic comments. An example of this is a manager shouting out folks that contributed to a recent project, but only listing the men even though women were major contributers. Favoritism is another huge issue within the culture. I've seen managers promote someone they are more clique-y with over someone that has more experience and qualifications. This contributes to the difficulty of growing in your career as your success is determined by how much your manager likes you and how they are viewed within the company more so than your success in the role. Similarly, certain product lines seem to get more attention and resources than others, which will greatly impact your experience at the company depending on which you join. During my years at HelioCampus, there have been several major product and future of the company decisions that senior leadership refuses to take a clear stance on. The result of this is a lot of wasted time in meetings, creating things that are hardly used or rolled back months later, and an overall sense of unsureness, which can be demoralizing as an employee. These moments are exacerbated by the lack of follow through from managers and senior leadership when they ask for input from those closest to the work. Retention and dealing with loss of headcount seems to be a major hurdle. My team experienced a reduction in headcount of over 50% without having any positions backfilled. It seems that the strategy is to have existing employees pick up the additional duties, yet conversations around burnout and adjustments to compensation rarely occur. There is a general sense across several teams that I've interacted with that our position in the company is not promised nor secure. This is largely due to how the company handles staffing. Over my time at HelioCampus, I have seen so much talent and seasoned experience leave due to the reasons I have outlined above.
