Pros
A few great people and a good product
Cons
Avoid this place at all costs. Merge comes across as a trendy, fun, lively place to work. It's not and the reviews on Glassdoor are very misleading. Those who have posted reviews on here are either new hires who haven't gotten to know the company well enough or are the Merge die-hards/sycophants. This is not a place to work if you value your mental health, agency, or the bare minimum of what any normal person would consider work-life balance. Yes, almost every review mentions the “long working hours” which is probably the only honest thing you’ll read on here. This is a long review, so read on if you want. TL;DR: Don’t waste your time at a company that doesn’t value work-life balance, doesn’t trust their employees, and is run by inexperienced leaders. — Leadership: At the helm are two young, inexperienced co-founders with relatively zero leadership experience. Both have impressive educational backgrounds, but that’s about it. The CEO is severely under-qualifed to be leading an entire company with this much funding. She is constantly keeping tabs on every employee and has trouble letting the people she’s hired do their jobs. She has admin access to every tool, platform, etc. and is known to go into them, try to do something that she doesn’t know how to do, break things, then leave it to the employees to fix it and spend even more hours reversing the damage she’s caused. She’s a walking HR violation and I’m shocked the board hasn’t sent in a mentor or had her step aside to make room for someone more fit to lead. The CRO, who I don't think understands the product, has a very old-school mindset which doesn't mesh well with the modern sales person. Marketing leadership was non-existant for a while. A huge miss for Merge, as the CEO, with no marketing experience, decided to lead the team while a leader was being found, marketing was at a standstill. Engineering, headed up by the co-founder and CTO, seems to be the only department that thrives. Young engineers getting paid insane amounts of money don’t really care about work-life balance. Company morals and values: The company as a whole is very dishonest. Merge boasts a great “perk” of “free dinner when/if you work past 7:00 PM” but it’s actually not a perk, you learn shortly after starting there that this “perk” is truly an expectation. You are expected to work past 7 every night, some teams are even told they need to work until at least 9 PM, and many employees do so, probably against their will. “Free Dinner” is actually just a veiled strategy to get their employees to work longer hours with less pay. Don’t be fooled. Someone quits abruptly? The executives doesn’t want the employees to know there was an unhappy worker, and quietly/quickly revokes said employees access and tells the company some fluffy story about how they weren’t the right fit anymore, yada yada. And there are far more who have quit or been fired than they let on. Want to leave at a normal hour? Don’t do it unless you’ve told your manager or the CEO exactly why you have to leave and don’t make it common occurrence. If you don’t, they will find out and it will be remarked on at your next performance review, the CEO has eyes and ears everywhere. Feel like your working hard and doing good work? It doesn’t matter, the company only cares about hours worked rather than the quality of work. In the CEOs eyes, the more hours worked = the better your work ethic is. Want to work from home? You can’t, no exceptions. This is a fully on-site company. Yes, if you have an appointment or something you need to take care of, they will accommodate, however, you have to give at least 2 days advanced noticed for any WFH request and get your manager’s approval. Your work calendars are public (and that can’t be changed) and you’re expected to tell the entire company that you are on PTO, home sick, heading to an appointment etc. You literally can’t do anything privately. There’s an inherent distrust for all employees, as if the co-founders believe that every one of their employees is out to get them. The saddest part is that Merge preys on new grads. They seem to favor hiring folks that have no other corporate experience and no idea how poorly the company is managed. Easy to take of advantage of I guess… – Overall, If you’re young, don’t have a family, and have no other responsibilities besides yourself, MAYBE Merge is a good place for you. Otherwise, avoid this place at all costs.
