Pros
Coworkers are solid developers. Office environment is laid back and casual. Free snacks and drinks. Flexible work schedule, remote work allowed.
Cons
The CTO is an incompetent micro manager. He's obviously a first time CTO and in over his head. Engineering org was moved away from CTO and under CEO. As a result, the CTO has no idea what he should be working on. The org change works on paper, but he hasn't stopped his day to day interference. He verbally abuses anyone that disagrees with his uninformed ideas. When a PHD tells you that your "algorithm" isn't going to work, you should listen. When sysadmins tell you the hardware is crap, you should listen. You shouldn't listen to one "architect" that tells you everythying you want to hear. The CTO will bypass multiple layers of managers to task people with his own priorities. He obviously thinks he's the CEO, trying to make decisions about how sales and marketing works, while his own org repeatedly fails. It's telling when the CTO is doing QA on his own, and forcing developers to address the bugs he's found. If he's not injecting work on a daily basis, he's yelling at people for underperforming. He should trying yelling at a mirror. The organization he's built is a reflection of him...a complete failure. The best measure of a person is how they treat people that leave the company. The day before someone leaves, the CTO would say they are high performers and key to the organization. As soon as they quit, they are poor performers with bad attitudes that he would fire anyway. The reviews on Glassdoor make it clear that the CTO makes working at Lookingglass a soul crushing experience. Current product has been two years in the making, with massive failures at every step. The only thing that hasn't changed is the managers. How does the CTO fail for two years and not get fired? The CEO must be protecting him, that can't happen forever. Investors can only be fooled for so long and vaporware doesn't pay the bills. Fake demos and marketing don't fool customers. Turnover on the team is measured weekly. (Did anyone quit this week?) As for 5 star reviews with high praise, they are obviously bogus. Morale is rock bottom and anyone that thinks otherwise is being fooled. Potential for greatness exists, but not with current CTO and Engineering managers. Employees across the company still have hope that CTO will leave and environment will improve, but they are all actively looking for new opportunities. If you're interviewing, here are some questions to ask: Why is the CTO still in place after 20+ developers have left, most citing him specifically as the reason. That many people can't be bad employees. Why is the CTO still in place after 2 years of failures? How many second chances can a person get? Why is every deadline treated like a Death March? Why is how the product looks more important than the backend? Without a solid backend, nothing works. Focusing on the GUI to mask architecture flaws creates mountains of technical debt that will never be addressed. Why are developers told "this time it will be different", and then when its crunch time, it's "we need 110% to make this deadline"? Why does the CTO dictate what software to use and how to implement features, opposite of what developers know is right? Why is fake data used to demonstrate features with the express purpose of deceiving customers? Are architecture decisions made by a single person or is the experience of the entire team taken into account? When those decisions are questioned, is there a civil discussion or does it turn into a tantrum? When a large architecture change is made, is it planned extensively or is it done in the same sprint with little regard to the impact on every other part of the system? Does product management dictate system specs, even when the developers know the hardware can't support the feature requirements? How many people have left the team in the last 6 months? How many women are in the organization? Is the CTO disrespectful to women?Show Less