Diverse projects, motivated employees, startup environment - Anonymous employee Motivo Employee Review

4.0
17 Nov 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Seeing a project through it's entirety at Movio shares the same feeling as being within a startup. From market research and trade studies, through architectural and systems definition, finalizing in development and deployment; each employee takes part in a cradle-to-grave product development ecosystem. You can find multiple projects developing concurrently under Motivo's roof that range from mobility to consumer products to connected devices. The size of the team (35~ employees) lends itself to intimate collaboration and facilitated idea transfer. Roles in projects usually span major subsystems (Mechanical, Electrical, Firmware, Software), so involvement and ownership are important traits.

Cons

Multiple, high intensity projects can lead to long work hours and high expectations. Do not expect working here as an engineer to be a 8AM to 5PM job. Many of the employees who work here pull long hours. Expect your work ethic to be compared accordingly.

Explore other reviews about Motivo

5.0
11 Sept 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

technically challenging projects, great team, fast pace, variety of projects, great inhouse manufacturing capabilities

Cons

occasional marathons, dynamic workload, somethings challenging projects coupled with challenging client personas

2.0
19 Feb 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

One of the pillars the company is supposed to be built on is "working with cool people," and they live up to that. Motivo has some of the best employees to work with of any job I've had. Functional managers seem to genuinely care about their direct reports. The company also lets employees access shop resources for personal use during off time, and they're flexible with working from home. There are opportunities to learn a wide range of skills, but not to much depth.

Cons

The other three pillars of the company's philosophy as presented are "good compensation," "cool projects," and "time to live your life." They don't seem genuinely committed to these. Pay is below market for the area and profit sharing is low to negligible, so it doesn't come close to making up the difference. How interesting projects are is subjective, but making your interests and reservations known to management has seemingly no effect on assignments, so it's likely you'll end up working on something mundane compared to the exciting engineering you hear going on around you in southern California. Personally I have seen very few interesting projects at Motivo in my time regardless of my involvement in my them. You will not likely have the time to live your life that you are sold in onboarding. The 4x10 schedule is a worse deal than it sounds, since days easily bloat to 12 hours or the extra day off is lost to work. Aggressive timelines and poor project/personnel management mean weekend work and 50 hour weeks will be common, especially if you're being moved around on projects often. Management is trying to change this culture by increasing the expected workload and placing the responsibility to keep work distributed evenly on the engineering team. Lastly, there is a bizarre culture of CEO-worship among the overhead staff that can be uncomfortable.

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