Engineering is a career dead-end - Software Engineer Handshake Employee Review

1.0
19 Dec 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Full commitment to remote work, pay is competitive

Cons

The reviews don't lie, there has been a massive negative shift in the company's culture throughout 2023, starting with the performance based layoffs at the beginning of the year. Internal company surveys also reflect the sentiment; employee confidence and pride in the company has tanked. No action has been taken by leadership to change this. The engineering organization has been in disarray ever since the surprise Fall 2022 re-org, and re-orgs are now regularly happening every six months. Like your team or what you're working on? Don't get too attached, soon enough you'll be on a new team in a new product area that nobody is familiar with with no training. Teams are disbanded with no thought put into the maintaining the domain knowledge of the team members, and documentation is nonexistent. Collaboration is starting to break down, no doubt due to the company's "performance culture" and focus on individual impact above all else. Tribalism is becoming common, where other teams will try to put a stop to any work that crosses into their domain, regardless of project priorities. Worst of all are the performance reviews. First of all it takes months to even receive your reviews, by the time you do you're already a third of the way into the next cycle. Then there are the reviews themselves, and despite the supposed culture, performance is not rewarded. The most minor of missteps will be used against you to knock down your review score - even if they were due to factors outside of your control. It's also a common theme that negative feedback is not regularly shared by managers, so negative reviews come as a complete surprise.

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Handshake Response
2y
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. We recognize that there have been substantial changes across the organization – and R&D in particular – over the past year or so. As of December 2023, we have new leadership in place over both Product and Engineering, and we are confident in these leaders and their vision for the organization. We anticipate that with these individuals at the helm, many of your concerns will be addressed. We welcome feedback about internal processes, including our performance review system, and we run a retro after each cycle to assess how we can improve the process – we’ll bring your feedback into that conversation as we want the performance review process to be impactful and timely.

Explore other reviews about Handshake

5.0
25 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Convenient as it was remote

Cons

No cons, other than it may take a bit to get paid

1.0
22 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Challenging, interesting position in the short term.

Cons

The company has implemented a new timer policy that has “active” and “inactive” time on the backend that makes up for the total time. We were getting paid by total time (as you should), but HAI has changed it to only pay contributors for the time marked “active.” Time is “active” when scrolling, typing, and clicking within the specific task tab. Time is “inactive” when none of the previous actions are happening; i.e., when reading the task without moving the mouse or pressing keys, researching in another tab, etc. It sounds like they have changed the rules to only pay for active time, which has caused huge pay discrepancies. The percentage of inactive time is usually way more than active time on these timers due to the amount of reading, visual analyzing, thinking, and research required for some tasks. This behavior is unacceptable because time that seems “inactive” is still important to the quality and completion of tasks. They keep throwing accusations like “time thieves” around to justify it. If you respect yourself, pack it up and go somewhere else. I know most people who work at these places are desperate for income, but that’s exactly what they’re hoping for. They’re hoping you will be desperate enough to be taken advantage of.

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