Great leaders, and international colleagues - Simulation Software Engineer Ascent Robotics Employee Review

- I am re-adding my previous review with edits and marking outlook as positive since the company realized the management problem and actively (albeit bit slowly) making changes to improve on things - Great technical staff, smart and enthusiastic people who are willing to go the extra mile to make things happen. - Flexibility to work on different areas and learn new technologies. - Lots of cool hardware to work/play with, hi-tech approach in development and research. - Chance to work on technologies that potentially will have great effect on a whole industry maybe even on the society. - Good location.

- Tendency of overpromises both internally and towards partners, investors hurt morale, some people are overworked and nothing is ever finished properly because there are 5 other things to do all the time - Advertised as a western-style startup but rather managed somewhere between a consultancy and a struggling mid-size Japanese organization. - Disconnect between senior management and the rest of the company - some teams are completely alone in figuring out what to do which creates lot of inefficiencies. - Company heavily tries so save on space and equipment which results in overcrowded office space. Scaling up is too fast while neither the office nor the organization can support this many people. - Problems are seldom listened to, feedback is not given, admin/management are occasionally hostile to employees or disregarding their needs to improve work efficiency and daily life.

・Your colleagues are friendly in general and the operation & sales teams are very helpful. ・The company took a very quick action and introduced WFH policy to prevent their employees from the risk of getting COVID-19. ・Compensate fairly well compared with most companies in Japan. ・CEO is a well known figure and can potentially leverage his presence to drive the business with clients. ・Managers don't micro manage their team members and there are a lot of freedom.

・The company is lacking tech leads / senior engineers who are professionally mature, competent in leading projects & software engineering. ・The management does not take performance review seriously and they randomly put together a 360 review. Obviously unless he/she does a really bad job no one will get a low score hence this does not reveal low and high performers.