Terrible management. Company keeps hiring photographers and then never listens to them, making terrible products. - Member Of Technical Staff Lytro Employee Review

1.0
20 Sept 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Pros: Catered lunches. HR team is nice and most of the employees are great.

Cons

Middle management is horrible and frustrating to work for. Goals, requirements, deliverables are not clearly spelled out. Feedback is not given clearly. Communication is overall very poor, resulting in frustration and wasted time, and projects having to be done over and over again because direction can't be given either from the get go, or to make corrections and achieve desired change. Micro-management, even within management rolls. "Work-life balance" is a joke, it's the start up culture and mentality for sure. Poor prioritization and time management leads to everything being PRIORITY 1o and crisis mode to get everything done before deadlines. Camera company with no photographers - and when they do hire photographers they don't listen to them - or think that they know better - resulting in frustrating/not user friendly products which are difficult to represent. Totally unrealistic about the real user and current market for the newer product, and unwilling to listen and make realistic adaptations for that market.

Explore other reviews about Lytro

5.0
13 Dec 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great team mentality and cool technology.

Cons

Small company makes it difficult for career growth.

5.0
2 Oct 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Working at a smaller company is great because you don't have to tunnel through mountains of bureaucracy to get things done. Things at Lytro move fast, and you can definitely impact the company because it is so adaptable and nimble. If a newish engineer has a great idea, he or she can take it directly to anyone - even the CEO. There's no need to submit ideas to committees where they will languish. There are also great perks like a free shuttle to the Mountain View Caltrain station, catered lunch, free snacks, ping pong and a pool table. There are weekly happy hours and occasional evening events, like pub quiz, which are well attended. Management has been very responsive to requests for change. For example, for a long time we only had the ping pong table. After employees expressed a desire for another option, lo and behold a pool table arrived.

Cons

For some people, being at a start-up can be too stressful. Problems that would be small elsewhere, like a shipping delay, can be big problems here. Also, there are many people in the company who have to wear multiple hats. This is true in engineering, ops and G&A. I personally liked this since I enjoy variety but it may not be for everyone.

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