Sourcegraph Reviews

- Glitters but ain't gold: Like many tech startups, it sounds cool on paper but doesn't work well in practice. This company is growing far too fast to nail down reasonable goals and establish a healthy culture. After they rope you in with their initial investment, you're on your own. Employees just try to avoid being the scapegoat when things go wrong. But things go wrong because the CEOs have moved the goal post yet again, running after the next shiny object. - Be your own best friend: Because, as I mentioned before, you're on your own. There is no onboarding, just tons and tons of tribal knowledge hidden away in dusty documents, if it's documented at all. They balk at suggestions to improve the onboarding process despite multiple comments from new employees citing the same issues. - The CEOs: One of the CEOs acts as if someone told him he was a diversity hire and he has made it his mission to make everyone else suffer to prove a point. He has a habit of publicly shaming other employees and criticizing their work without ever having participated in the process leading up to it. The horrendous, misanthropic things he's said will eventually bite him, but he continues as if none of it can be documented or exhibited in a reddit community. The other CEO is his enabler, putting nice (but empty) words over the boo-boos to smooth things over, never actually putting any muscle into accountability or change. Neither of them has any real experience in the workforce besides their expensive private university, so they have no idea how to manage people, let alone have realistic expectations. - Hire fast, fire faster: My gut instinct told me this was not the job for me when they abruptly fired the majority of the marketing team after less than a month on the job. The "official" reason was that they'd "failed to meet their goals". But in reality, no goals were ever set (or even clarified) for anyone involved. It was purely political and absolutely wrongful. There was no improvement plan, no evaluation period, no communication, no direction. I naively stayed on, placated by false resolutions from the higher-ups and a determination to make the best of what I had. - Fake woke culture: Every word and every value painstakingly written into the Code of Conduct received pushback from one of the CEOs, despite the fact that some of it was already there. That should tell you a lot about the culture. It's all a sham. Although most of the other employees are nice, there is no support from higher-ups for inclusivity in any form. They claim to love assertiveness and care about the quality of work, but they hate hearing "no". Even if the expectation is ridiculous, even if the reasoning is valid, even if the potential fallout is disastrous. But it'll be your fault (not theirs) when it goes wrong anyway. - One way or the highway: I was so happy when they decided to reorganize my department. Little did I know I'd be worse off than I started. Product has no idea how documentation works and has zero experience managing it, and they inform their expectations with a rigidity that is characteristic of people with no knowledge. Even worse, they refuse to understand that there is more than one way to do things. Technical writing is inherently collaborative. Management that doesn't understand this instead fills up valuable time with pointless micromanaging to force interaction--gathering feedback too soon for documents that aren't ready for review, from teammates who don't even read correctly to answer questions, and making a bunch of useless noise in the team chats to keep everyone "in the loop". The final nail in the coffin was a noticeable lack of support for team members that aren't favorites. If management wasn't directly involved in hiring you with that unnecessarily drawn-out process (that was made for hiring designers, by the way) then you're not going to be treated with the same care. But you might be publicly shamed at company meetings.

I wanted to share some real talk about my time at Sourcegraph, especially since you might be considering a role there. It's always good to go in with both eyes open, right? The work environment at Sourcegraph isn't just a mixed bag; it presents considerable challenges. They've made a strategic pivot recently, but that's only part of the story. The leadership team has been completely overhauled multiple times in just two years. It's tough to have any confidence in the longevity of the current leadership when you've seen their predecessors shown the door one after the other. Initially, these changes brought a sense of hope, but by the third round, it's hard not to feel a bit sorry for the new leaders who are trying their best - just like the last ones did. Regarding the executive team, to put it simply, they lack experience. There's a palpable sense of internal strife, almost like they're participants in their own version of the Hunger Games, each afraid of being the next to go. This atmosphere of uncertainty doesn't lead to outright micromanagement, but something perhaps more frustrating. Often, you'll receive vague directives like "make it better" without clear guidance on what that actually means. If you dare to ask for clarification, you risk being labeled as entitled. And remember, how you interpret and act on these vague instructions will come back around in your impact reviews, which I'll get into a bit more later. Job security is a significant concern. Layoffs have become a recurring theme, not just an occasional blip. It's happened several times over the last two years alone. With the management structure in constant flux, you never really feel settled. It's like standing on shifting sands, always unsure of where you stand or who you'll report to next or if they will even be left around by the next review cycle. Now, let's talk about the impact reviews. Sourcegraph has been around for a decade, so they're far from a startup. The real issue is that they're struggling to find a way to significantly increase revenue to finally IPO. The CEO and CTO seem to be out of fresh ideas, so there's this pressure on employees to come up with million-dollar ideas - or to “make it better” 😉. If you don't come up with something that substantially boosts the bottom line, you're labeled as not making an impact, putting you at risk of being in the next round of layoffs which always seem to be just around the corner. Even if you do come up with a great idea, it gets absorbed by the top brass, and then it's back to square one - you need another big idea, increase your commit rate (which gets judged at impact reviews) or go back to helping endless new hires, new management, and customer success team navigate a tech stack that's been left hollow by the departure of the many skilled devs that owned them but have left due to layoffs or attrition and hope that they perceive those efforts as impactful. In short, while there are some perks like fair pay, the overall environment is fraught with peril, from unstable leadership and job insecurity to a high-pressure culture around million dollar feature ideas. It's a lot to take on, and I just wanted you to know what you might be getting into. Wishing you the best in your job search and career. Take care!