Small company with a great potential - Senior Software Engineer Decentriq Employee Review

- A few motivated and capable colleagues. - Interesting space (data privacy, secure computation), with potential though the execution internally didn’t reflect it.

Micromanagement: Despite being hired for my expertise, my input was often overridden. PM frequently dictated the direction, reducing design to a support function. Equity concerns: I was offered stock options, but was exited from the company just before my first vesting cliff, with little clarity or openness around the timing. Lack of communication and fairness: Several people were fired suddenly and without prior notice, creating a climate of fear and confusion. There was no clear communication or support from the leads. Low trust environment: Decisions were often made behind closed doors, and there was little psychological safety across teams.

Decentriq has a healthy work culture -- different teams talk to each other regularly, expectations are clearly communicated and reasonable, work/life balance has no issues. No one is a jerk, everyone acts in good faith, and therefore the human/social part of work is excellent. The management layer is especially transparent -- I've never worked anywhere else where the company health, strategy, and financials were so clearly and humanely conveyed to the entire company.

Decentriq suffers from most of the typical small startup pain points: there aren't enough people to get everything done, everyone has to work on slightly more different things than they might like, there's always pressure to ship quickly and never enough time to plan. It's not egregious, but it's very different than working at a larger company where each major job function has people supporting it.