Katana Reviews

4.3

82% would recommend to a friend

(43 total reviews)

Kristjan Vilosius and Ben Hussey

86% approve of CEO

76% positive business outlook

Katana has an employee rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars, based on 43 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Katana employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

43 reviews
2.0
23 Mar 2023

Dissatisfied

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good vibes, knowledgable people, senior management has a clear vision. In general, Katanauts (as they call themselves) are a friendly and hardworking tribe.

Cons

Each team runs business their own way. At least one of the engineering teams (the one I happened to be in) is misaligned with company values. Essentially, the team collaboration is punished and all communication with other team members has to be done through the team lead. Also a team-lead operates as a mentor, pull request gate keeper for all PRs and a feature lead. Moreover, he is in charge of implementing the most critical features. Due to overwork, he becomes a delivery bottleneck and makes poor judgements. Code review process is rather slow since you would have to decrypt cryptic comments of the team lead in pull requests OR you would be expected to make a call to verbally discuss each comment with him which is extremely time-consuming. It's likely in the end you would be blamed for his mistakes. Be careful which team you join!

1.0
9 Aug 2023

Toxic team leads

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Looked like a next unicorn outside

Cons

Political games, toxic environment due to insecure team leads. No one cares about just software engineers. Everything is decided by managers who get really jealous when decisions are made by their subordinates. No leaders but insecure managers. Inappropriate sexual jokes from some managers

avatar
Katana Response
2y
Thank you for reaching out with your feedback and sharing your perspective on areas where we can improve. I am truly sad to hear that despite of a generally very good feedback on our company culture, we didn’t live up to your expectations. I can confidently say that we do work continuously to learn from our successes and failures to get better and make sure that everyone in Katana would be able to do their best work. I will take your feedback and discuss this internally to make sure that we have a solid plan and practices to avoid situations like this in the future. I want to confirm that jokes that hurt even one person in Katana, or make anyone feel uncomfortable, are completely unacceptable for us. When raised, we address them with all seriousness. We want to encourage people to bring their authentic selves to work, but also expect everyone’s uniqueness to come with kindness and good level of sensitivity. I do have to say that some aspects of your feedback take me as a surprise. I do wish we had the chance to discuss all your feedback while you were still with us, so we could have solved the challenges as they occurred and taken appropriate action immediately. Please know that you are very welcome to reach out to me any time, if you still wish to share more context and make sure that we take the most appropriate action. With kindness, Kristi Schumann Chief People & Culture Officer
2.0
25 Apr 2024

Avoid at any cost

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Benefits and compensation level is ok

Cons

Toxic management, some of managers do not have any clue how to build a team and team spirit, people are treated as a resource here. Do not worse spending your time if you want to work in the healthy environment. Talking a lot about culture, but in reality it means nothing, no culture noticed at all.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 43 Reviews

Glassdoor has 46 Katana reviews submitted anonymously by Katana employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Katana is right for you.