Pros
I worked at Buildkite for two years as CTO. During my time, I was consistently impressed with the talent and attitude of the engineering team. There’s a very solid group of people here who deeply believe in the vision of the company. Working alongside them was awesome. The product, technology/infrastructure stack and customer base are inspiring. You will interact with and work to accelerate the biggest engineering teams in the world. Household names like Uber, Airbnb, OpenAI and more are using the product every day and depend on Buildkite to ship their apps and products. There is a good culture of blameless post-mortems, transparency, and following up on problems. Having the CEO be a technologist at heart means teams do not have to haggle for time to address tech debt, security, performance and reliability. Working at a fully remote business was a first for me, and the company supports remote work well, with budgets for office fit out and a smart remote-first culture and communications process. The company gets together as a whole every year, and there are opportunities for local meetups. Salary is competitive for this kind of organisation, and stock options are provided to all staff. The company has strong growth ambitions, which if realised will create a lot of value for people getting onboard now. Perks are pretty good too, with money for internet/phone, health, and self-eductation/training. Most engineers are on call, which is compensated at a reasonable rate, plus time off in lieu. During my two years at Buildkite, I frequently worked with Keith, the CEO and co-founder of the company. Working alongside him was a highlight of my time here. I have never worked with someone with such passion for product. He is open about the fact that this company is his life’s work. He has a great understanding of the customer, and a clear vision for where the product needs to go. As he is a product engineer by background, keeping up with him can sometimes be hard, but it is very rewarding. The role of the CEO is to expect the best. Keith’s management style can be very direct, but to his credit, he is always open to debate and discussion. I think some of the complaints I heard stem from the role dynamics inherent to a senior leader who is involved in the business, and sometimes working directly with the team. I disagree with some of the other reviews here about his reputation internally. To the extent that my staff shared with me, he was viewed as demanding, but well respected by most engineers, especially when they had been able to work with him. Whenever he spoke to the company directly, it was well received and was extremely clarifying to my teams. A final note. Contrary to one of the reviews here, I didn’t leave due to burnout. I am very proud of the work that I did over the time I spent at Buildkite. Towards the end of my time there, I could see that Keith and Buildkite were going to need more experienced technology leadership to get the company to the next level, and I felt that trying to learn it on the job was not in the best interest of the company. I left on good terms, with a lot of new skills and insight, and am readying myself for the next challenge. (After a trip to Japan, of course)
Cons
Being part of a company that is growing fast and transitioning from being a small startup, to one that has ambitions to become a major player in the devtools industry, and grow in size by multiples is HARD. Culturally, I think a lot of the spirit has been retained from the “old days” of the company, but a lot also has had to evolve, and has been evolving rapidly over the past couple of years. During my time at Buildkite, this required us to make tough decisions about company policies, required skills, team priorities and org structure, and these decisions affected people and teams directly. These don’t always sit well with everyone, but were essential to grow the business. To be successful at Buildkite you definitely need to be a “manager-of-one” type. You have to be confident in understanding what the most important thing to do is. Proactively seeking to understand the why, learning the product in depth, and being confident working with customers are all essential skills.