DigitalOcean Reviews

The CEO of the company is not a leader, is unapproachable and is slowly driving the company into the ground. He is disrespectful to almost everyone and his ideas are always correct. They are pushing for diversity, but it doesn't seem like any female leaders are liked. I would be surprised if the board didn't push him out by the end of the year. On top of it, another member of the exec team is a brother (who left and came back - never a good sign) and several Directors/Managers throughout the organization are related to one another - conflict of interest? Turnover has been terrible - reading in a newsletter that 2-3 people left every few weeks is absolutely insane. They preach an amazing growth opportunity, but continue to hire outside of the organization because they have no career paths laid out or development plans in place. They ARE well funded, but don't mistake this for having great leaders. The company has been slow to adapt to the enterprise sales trend of technology companies for revenue growth and is now scrambling to fix it since they aren't hitting projected revenue. They have relied on word of mouth and their "community" for business and are just now realizing they need a sales team...5 years after inception. They underpay a lot of teams outside of engineering (they are the most important) and then do "off cycle comp reviews" just to say they are "working to fix" pay inequities. A lot of managers are inexperienced, which isn't the bad part - but it's that they don't have the leadership (or qualified leadership) to train these young professionals to succeed. They have a ton of values, but in reality, it seems like the executive team is exempt from all of them. I won't continue to ramble on, but you get the idea. It appears great on the outside, but inside it's is a mess, their growth is slowing, and you need to be prepared to be frustrated and stressed everyday with no explanation and a "this is the way I want it" attitude from the top.

Where to start. You'll hear DigitalOcean touting a people first culture. The truth is that saying or writing out culture over and over doesn't make it true. DigitalOcean has had more turnover in the top of the organization due to the remaining two founders who are brilliant but ineffective at organizational planning and leadership. They have clear ideas on what they would like to get done but fail to understand how to manage people in order for those ideas to become reality. If you find yourself in disagreement with them you had better hope that you are related to the founders or your career at DigitalOcean will be short lived. Search LinkedIn for prior DigitalOcean employees and you'll find your search is littered with employees in upper level management and C suite roles. Here is a non-comprehensive list of positions that have left, been demoted or were exited from the organization during the last 2 years: CMO, CFO, VP of Security, 2 directors of marketing, director of networking, director of FP&A, controller, creative director, manager of talent development, multiple product managers, brand design manager. The entire finance team exited the organization during 2016 from analysts to CFO. I judge companies not on what they say but what they do. Unfortunately for DigitalOcean the actions do not bode well for the company.