Pros
Passionate Developers: The company has hired many passionate developers who are great to work with, particularly attracting top Clojure talent. Interesting Business Domain: The mission of expediting the process of connecting people to suitable clinical trials is one I took great pride in contributing to. Compensation and Benefits: As a remote-first employer, the company offers decent benefits and competitive salaries. Efficient Interview Process: The interview process is straightforward and effectively assesses candidates' ability to contribute to and integrate with existing codebases. OneStudyTeam did well to screen for culture fit. Diversity and Inclusion: the company took great efforts to highlight and celebrate our global workforce. I enjoyed what I got to learn out of these. Historical Highs: Under its former brand name, Reify Health, the company was highly regarded within the global Clojure communities I was active in. In 2022, ReifyHealth would have merited a 5-star review.
Cons
Financial Instability: Despite significant investments and a valuation of $5 billion, the company remains cashflow negative. Layoffs in December 2022 aimed to reach profitability by July 2024, but this goal remains unmet, leading to further benefit cutbacks. Declining Morale: The work environment has shifted from collaborative to competitive, with many employees becoming more isolated. This change has negatively impacted team cohesion and overall morale. Additionally, the top talent mentioned in the Pros has been leaving en masse. Inconsistent Management Practices: Management style has been inconsistent, ranging from absenteeism to extreme micromanagement. This includes excessive performance evaluations disguised as team-building exercises and requiring detailed reports on every meeting. Leadership Confusion: The company underwent rapid expansion between 2021 and 2022, growing its engineering team fivefold. However, this growth was followed by abrupt layoffs, most notably reducing 67% of the engineering workforce in December 2022. Additionally, product direction has been inconsistent, with several projects being canceled just before their scheduled release after months of development. Poor Engineering Choices: Engineering leadership decisions often favored unneccesary complexity over simplicity. One example was to mandate gRPC for all services without considering the praticality for simple CRUD applications. This was later reverted to a ban on any gRPC, and led to significant tech debt. Additionally, the switch from ClojureScript to TypeScript as our frontend language, while beneficial for attracting top frontend talent, contributed to the accumulation of tech debt. The recurring pattern of favoring flashy technologies over practical solutions underscores the need for more strategic decision-making. Prospective hires should be aware that they are likely to work on legacy systems with overly complicated designs.