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      Rockset

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      Rockset Reviews

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      4.7

      89% would recommend to a friend

      (36 total reviews)

      Venkat Venkataramani

      87% approve of CEO

      88% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      4.8

      Career opportunities

      4.6

      Compensation and benefits

      4.5

      Culture and values

      4.5

      Diversity and inclusion

      4.4

      Senior management

      4.3

      Work/Life balance

      Rockset has an employee rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars, based on 36 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Rockset employee rating is 22% above average for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      36 reviews
      2.0
      18 Aug 2022

      Disorganized and Dishonest

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Great technology, smart people, interesting use cases and good comp plans.

      Cons

      The company is a cult of personality that absolutely revolves around the CEO and the Chief Product Officer. As a result, their hands are in everything, micromanaging even the jobs of other management to the extent that they can't effectively do their jobs. The amount of "big brother is watching you" vibe is unreal. Everything is tracked, every call is recorded and reviewed, and feedback is often voiced as "here's what you did wrong." Don't ever be seen disagreeing with the CEO or CPO, or you'll be on the naughty list. There're definitely people playing favorites here. In addition, there's no proper management for super important business functions. For instance, there's still no CFO. There's no COO dedicated to making sure everyone is working effectively. The Sales team has no consistent message or playbook. As a result, a lot of things are extremely disorganized and hectic. People are often not on the same page, and things are partially communicated to only a small portion of people who need to know about them. This makes even simple tasks confusing and difficult, since there is no standard way of doing things. Lastly, the leadership has been dishonest, not only with employees, but also with potential customers. Many of the features advertised on the website either don't exist or are half baked. Top management often sells non-existent features to potential customers, and then cracks the whip on engineering, forcing them to build the features in record time, all the while telling the customer, "we've always had this feature, and it's been tested and used by other customers."

      avatar
      Rockset Response
      3y
      Hey there, First of all, thank you for the feedback. We are sorry you didn't have a great experience at Rockset. Critical feedback like this allows us to get better and we always take them seriously. We are a small team that tries to stay nimble. Our product development and release processes allow us to release a slightly newer version of our product every single week. Unlike traditional enterprise software companies that have 1 or 2 releases in an entire year, we move fast and hustle to get new functionality out quickly. It is a strategic advantage a small startup like us have when we compete against massive incumbents with deep pockets. While it might seem chaotic on the surface, our engineering team has worked tirelessly to make it happen using the wealth of knowledge they have from scaling systems several orders of magnitude larger in their prior lives. We agree with you that this type of fast paced iterative environment is not for everyone. It is unfortunate that you found this environment confusing. Our ability to continuously innovate and iterate quickly is actually one of the biggest reasons we continue to attract top talent across the organization. We are not yet big enough right now (Aug 2022) to have dedicated sales enablement resources or a COO or a CFO. At our scale most of these roles are not yet a full-time job and are best served by someone playing that role part-time or external contractors. Nothing unusual here - just another startup trying to be scrappy. Seems like you thrive in an environment with a lot more structure and we cannot wait for our company to grow up and get there quickly. The only part we strongly disagree in your entire review is about being dishonest. Our <4% annual churn rate and 300+% net dollar retention numbers speak for themselves. So, seems like you are terribly mistaken in this regard and we welcome you to talk to any of our customers directly to hear about their experience with Rockset.
      2.0
      27 Mar 2023

      Don't recommend

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Concept of the technology is good The tech is good when it works

      Cons

      The earlier August review is completely accurate. It's important to note that the person who responded, likely the CPO, failed to address the major issue concerning the CEO and CPO. The engineering team is under a lot of stress and is pushed to the brink because of the lack of a QA team. They do their best, but things keep breaking due to promised features that aren't built yet. This affects customers negatively. The C-suite, except for the CTO, doesn't add any concrete value. They just talk about how great things are going, while the sales team continues to sell in spite of them. The company treats people as expendable, and a couple layoffs have already occurred. The marketing and product team, under the CPO, is the most powerful. They hold most of the revenue functions, and as long as you agree with the CPO, you're relatively safe. It's alarming that the CPO's team is as big as the sales team at a B2B SaaS company. The morale is at an all-time low - if you don't believe this review, check out the number of employees on LinkedIn Insights, which has been decreasing. People are either quitting or getting laid off. The CEO needs to consider the company as a whole, not just the CPO's goals. The technology is useful when it works, but there are several SEVs every week. There's no accountability for the product and marketing team, both under the CPO. They take offense when called out, even if it's supported by facts and numbers. The focus should be on stabilizing the product instead of introducing new capabilities. Without a QA team, things break frequently. It's unfortunate that poor management might prevent this company from going public, even though the concept is solid and there is a need for real-time analytics. I also noticed that the reply to the August 2022 review just mentioned rates, but no numbers. If I went from $1 in sales to $3, then I too have a 3x growth...

      avatar
      Rockset Response
      3y
      I have the privilege of being the sales leader at Rockset and this feedback does not represent our company, culture or executive team. It’s disappointing to read when my experience has been first-class. I have 15+ years working at tech companies and I can tell you that a company this size does not triple revenue 2 years straight unless you have great leaders. The leadership team at Rockset possess a rare combination of drive, intelligence and empathy. The speed, energy and excitement of a startup isn't for everyone. Fortunately, for the vast majority of Rocksetters, we wouldn't want it any other way. Our sales team continues to sell because of company-wide efforts throughout the entire sales cycle and they have access to the most hands-on exec team that I have worked with. I've watched our executive team write code, join customer calls and clean our office kitchen - nothing is above or below them. Rockset continues to retain and attract top performers and is actively hiring. High NDR and renewal rate are complemented by headcount diligence that is resulting in an efficient and scalable GTM. Our sales org is accountable for our revenue function and is 2x+ the size of our product & marketing team. Our CPO's vision allows Rockset to skate to where the puck is going and our engineering team balances high innovation and performance. Pound for pound, this is the best concentration of engineering talent in the industry. If you check out LinkedIn, you'll see a workforce that is experienced and extremely talented. Being a CPO at any startup isn’t easy and fortunately, Rockset has one of the best. Our CPO is courageous, rolls up their sleeves and puts our people and our company first. If you are looking for a place to learn, earn and grow, I would highly recommend Rockset. ------------------------------- Second reply: Hi. I'm not the above author, but Glassdoor won't let me make a separate comment, so I'm going to edit-in my reply down here. I am Louis Brandy, the VP of Engineering at Rockset. I am always up for discussion, critique and criticism of how and why we are working on what we are working on, how we're making decisions, and so on. Half the fun of working at a place like this is having 15 things you'd love to do on the whiteboard and knowing you can do 5, and it means, inevitably, difficult decisions have to be made. If anyone who works here (or even if you don't!) feels the need to have this conversation with me, you know how to find me. This is very much part of the healthy conversation that we need to be having, all the time, as a growing business. … but ultimately these discussions need to be grounded in the facts and the reality of the situation. It's one thing for us to disagree about direction, or strategy, or priorities but it's a different thing altogether to just, well, not have the facts right. The marketing/product team is the most powerful? They hold the revenue functions? The team is large? As large as sales? What? As someone who works extremely closely with everyone "named" here, and who understands the situation on the ground, both the facts and the strategy, I felt compelled to sign up for this site just to post this. This reads to me like a witch-hunt & smear against a particular set of people and organization (not mine!), and in a way that is not only unjustified but made in bad faith. It makes me sad. Anyway, I'm going to go back to building now. If anyone who reads this wants to talk, you know how to find me.
      5.0
      8 Nov 2021

      Great Company to work, best team

      Software engineer
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Rockset has a team-first value over anything else, which means you are not competing with other co-workers for impact, but instead focusing on getting valuable projects done by collaborating with others. If you just finished writing the code but don't get time to production, no worry, someone will cover your back, and you would do the same thing in return. Product roadmap is clear, we all know what's gonna be built in the next 3 years, and we are super confident to be on the right track.

      Cons

      Intense working env, has to jump back and forth on multiple projects. You have to enjoy the independence not hate it. Think if you are the type of person who is ready to "feed yourself" with new initiatives. Rockset is not in an aggressive growing mode. With more and more Saas startups raising lots of funds rapidly, you may feel less secure that the company is falling behind. My judgement is that it takes years to build a solid Saas product, and you couldn't expect everything happen over one night, but use your judgement, not mine. If you want to get the company to Nasdaq in 1 year, this is not the right place.

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      ReviewsRockset reviews

      Glassdoor has 38 Rockset reviews submitted anonymously by Rockset employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Rockset is right for you.