Xcalar is a very intense company. I recall management telling me on multiple occasions that the company does not believe in work/life balance. While that sentiment is stressful, it did help me improve at my job, that improvement would never be enough though. I believe Xcalar is only a comfortable environment for a very small subset of personality types, this is supported by extremely high turnover, and my personal experience. The management tries to push you, to be better, to do more, and I think they expect some pushback. Meetings would turn into yelling matches and that was somehow seen as normal. I don’t handle confrontation well, so I just felt like I was getting pushed around at work everyday. This was very harmful to me, I started having panic attacks after meetings. I would spend half an hour listening to music in the stairwell then I would be able work again, but one day it became too much and I had to leave the office. I came back late that night and finished my work. The next day my manager wanted to talk to me about how I left, but rather than any sort of empathy or an attempt to improve communication I was told that if I can’t handle the stress of the job I should quit. So I did.
