STAY AWAY, DON'T THINK IT'LL BE DIFFERENT FOR YOU
Pros
- Decent salary on paper (until you see the PILES of cons) - Interesting product
Cons
- You’ll work 12-hour days on average, with no overtime pay or recognition. - You’ll be forced into an unpaid on-call rotation: Mon–Sat, 12 hours a day. - You may get put on a PIP less than a month in, with little to no prior feedback. - Expect rude remarks and dismissive comments about your work. - No laptop or equipment will be provided. (Not even after the 3 month probation period!) - Tasks are ungroomed, deadlines are arbitrary, and 9 times out of 10 you’ll need to work overtime to deliver. (Unpaid overtime) - There is zero support or onboarding. Tech leads/CTO expect you to figure out everything on your own. That might be fine if there were time to learn the business, but there obviously isn’t any. It’s even worse when you’re on-call and customers are asking questions you can’t answer. Tech leads claim they’re available to help, but in practice they ignore you, even during business hours. - The tech stack is far from “modern” as other reviews suggest. The UI is built on Next.js but barely uses its features, leading to code smells and anti-patterns anywhere you look. Neither of the tech leads are familiar with it so they've essentially pushed the team to work against the framework by writing React as if it was a plain old client-rendered app. The API is somehow even worse, It's plain old JavaScript from a 2015 Express template with a makeshift framework duct-taped on top. - Some of the tech leadership has no idea what they’re doing. Their obsession with “impact” just means pushing out half-baked PoCs, piling up massive tech debt, and ignoring fundamentals (for some, DB transactions are a new concept. Not kidding). - The culture is toxic. Tech leads will gaslight you into believing this environment is “healthy”. It isn’t. Unless you’re a workaholic with no regard for yourself or your health, you’ll burn out fast. (Saw multiple engineers get fired during my already short tenure so make of that what you want) - Work/life balance doesn’t exist. You’re expected to always be available, and it’s common for the CEO to ping you well past business hours. - Leadership knows they’re in the wrong, that’s why they ask everyone in the company to post fake 5-star reviews here from time to time. I stayed much longer than I should have, convincing myself this was just startup growing pains. It’s not. Do not think it'll be different for you. It won't. Do yourself a favor and stay away. No salary or equity (negligible anyway!) is worth the guaranteed burnout you’ll face here. STAY AWAY.
