Mapbox Reviews

The most recent positive reviews were posted by what remains of the People team (two people I think? Hard to say, changes weekly) and the "leadership." Look at the dates of the most recent postings. They also made a big show at All Hands (shortly after the postings) of how the ratings on Glassdoor when up. They are having a very hard time hiring A or even B players. Do you see many responses from management to the negative Glassdoor reviews? This is because they are fine with losing so many people, they keep telling themselves and us "this is a performance-based culture and it's not for everyone." They are clueless but at least they stick to the politically driven talk track they keep trying to push on the company. The great new office in SF is mostly empty now due to the MASS exodus of both staff and leadership in the last year. Over 160 people and most of the leadership quit in the last year. Anyone who tells you different is lying. Culture of fear. They call it a "performance-based culture" but that is political speak for "you will work nonstop and keep your mouth shut or you can find somewhere else to work." Which we are all glad to do and actively moving in that direction. The employee happiness surveys are the worst I've seen. The last one we did in November was completed by close to 90% of what remained of the company (more have left since), which is a large response rate. The approval of leadership was in the mid 30% range. Believing leadership cares about people was in the mid 30% range. An employee asked the CEO during All Hands "how he planned to stop the bleeding of employees departing for better opportunities?" The CEO responded by saying the employee was wrong. "They didn't leave for better opportunities, they couldn't handle our performance-based culture. This is the ONLY good opportunity in the valley." 160 people left because they couldn't deal with the culture? Delusional much? He actually thinks people can't see through this. CEO also talked about how we could rest assured they will take action on all the negative responses and develop a plan where previously they had ignored negative responses. The plan they "rolled out" at All Hands to improve employee happiness... Adding more HRBP office hours to help the employees learn how to receive negative feedback better. So it's the fault of the employees that they happiness is low? Because we don't know how to receive negative feedback??? Mind-blowing. What remains of the management team thinks name calling and promoting your secret friends into leadership roles they have no experience in, is the way to scale. They scheme behind the backs of the employees, leaders, and investors. The thing is, word travels fast, nobody trusts each other here, so their scheming ends up being so transparent, which is laughable. They spend hours writing extremely long GitHub tickets and Paper Doc's and believe five pages of a meeting pre-read is a good use of time. GitHub is their main form of communication. They do not email, you have to read through endless GH tickets just to find one nugget of pertinent info. Not a strategic bone in their bodies, clueless on how to manage time and meetings, no understanding of the word "communication" or what it means to a scaling company, and NO common sense whatsoever. ZERO and I do mean zero experienced leadership. CEO and his buddies have backgrounds in bartending and political campaigns. Which makes them great at drinking and not telling us the truth. No upward mobility. No mentorship or support from management on any level. Nobody watching the money. The CFO left over a year ago, then the remaining experienced team members in Finance all left last December (days before the board meeting). They've appointed someone from engineering to run finance.... need I say more? The head of Sales left recently as well. I think he was the fourth or fifth head of sales in recent years. I liked him and the sales team had actually become the one bright spot in the company in terms of improved morale and incremental success. But that was short lived. Sadly. Arrogant, inexperienced CEO completely oblivious to the little people below him. I have been interviewing in recent months (as have literally all my team members) and every interview has started with "yeah we've heard about the chaos at Mapbox, you don't need to explain why you're leaving there." Once this company goes under, and it will, all the cronies will be in for a rude awakening when they join another company and find the Mapbox way of doing things will get you laughed out of any other remotely successful company. I could go on, but you get the picture. Don't ruin your resume by adding Mapbox to it.

The company is not doing well and I would avoid them at all costs. When I joined, the company was thriving and ready to be a ‘unicorn’ in the tech world. In my tenure at Mapbox that changed dramatically. They have done 2 rounds of layoffs in 2020 and I suspect there will be more. Everyone is struggling because they’re spread too thin and the tech that used to be cutting edge and unique is quickly becoming stale and falling behind. * The product isn’t as unique as it used to be. It can very easily be replaced with Google or another provider. * The CXOs/VPs are disconnected from what's happening and don’t care about ICs unless they’re in the ‘inner circle of favorites'. * The churn rate is huge. People are constantly either being fired or leaving on their own. * The leadership team sends mixed messages and is not transparent about what is happening in the company. Example: They told us they don't want a fully remote team but are actively looking to sublease the DC office. * Most of the middle management was promoted internally, so no one is not properly trained to manage. This makes growth as an IC incredibly difficult to accomplish. * Product teams are disconnected from one another and regularly miss release deadlines, causing problems with customers. * The Sales team is not up to date on the product, which causes over-promising or false advertising of what the product can do. Every AM/AE has a different way of selling Mapbox. * Sales changed leadership 5 times in the last 18 months. At one point, the CEO was the head of sales. This has lead to constant reorganization of the sales team structure and how the company sells, which has lead to inconsistent growth. * TAMs were created from SEs and CSMs as part of a sales reorg, which led to a huge disparity in technical ability. After 6 months, it became clear that TAMs were just CSMs that had been renamed to give customers the feeling like their team has technical ability. * Solutions Architects build solutions that aren't sticky. In almost every solution, Mapbox can easily be replaced with Google or another provider. And for those where it can't be replaced, they provide a full technical layout of the solution and code on Github. * HR is a waste of space and money. If complaints are filed against management, nothing is done and there is no support for ICs. * Layoffs commonly happen without notice or a PIP in place. Severance packages are small and insulting.