Hazelcast Reviews

2.8

43% would recommend to a friend

(61 total reviews)
avatar

Eric Bochner

45% approve of CEO

26% positive business outlook

Hazelcast has an employee rating of 2.8 out of 5 stars, based on 61 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Hazelcast employee rating is 27% below average for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

61 reviews
1.0
26 Mar 2023

Prospective Employees Beware!

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Earlier in its history, Hazelcast got a foot in the door in acquiring some good customers, albeit its footprint at those customers is still relatively small, at a project level (not enterprise adoption), but is now facing significant headwinds with various leadership challenges over the past year.

Cons

The following very high turnover at Hazelcast overall, and in particular, in its leadership ranks seems symptomatic of its poor leadership which leaves it rudderless: over the past ~3 years alone, the founders left, it's had 3 CMOs, 2 CROs, 2 CTOs (and currently has no CTO and has not had a real CTO with prior CTO experience for ~2.5 years, has had 2 CPOs, 2 CFOs and >90% of its sales organization has turned over in the last year alone. The current CRO's (Karen Smith) apparent lack of experience selling in the enterprise software/middleware/data space or to the top industries in which Hazelcast has traction (Banking & FS, Retail / e-commerce) has arguably resulted in a near 100% turnover since she joined (~1 year ago), the CTO who was very respected by most left ~3 years ago due to leadership challenges with the current CEO (Kelly Herrell), who, in turn, is/was not trusted and/or respected by many if not most at the company and has created a culture not conducive to rational employee hiring and retention. The only people in the C suite who have not turned over in the past 3 years are the CEO and CLO (who also has an "interesting" previous employment history with very little experience in the enterprise software space, e.g., having left the software business for a long time to sell chocolate candies for 9 years at a small chocolate company after his termination at a previous software firm). The leaders with experience in the relevant markets are mostly gone. The investors are lower tier PE firms and are apparently not providing the leadership to Hazelcast that it needs to be successful.

1.0
26 May 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Work life balance is pretty good, but that's only because nobody really cares if you do your job or not. Might still be a good place for a junior developer to learn some complex distributed systems skills, but other than that would not recommend..

Cons

Completely directionless company that has been killed off by an inept and generic executive team that has recently been hired in the image of the CEO. These are jaded bay area execs that will jump to the next company to try their luck elsewhere. They have no sympathy with core customers or their use cases. Disastrous divide between engineering team in Europe and executive team in America. The once engineering led culture has been killed off. The entirety of the engineering leadership that was around since the start of the company has all left in the last few months. Many of the highly regarded product managers who helped build the company have also left. Every single leader that has left was not even offered an exit interview and the attrition rate is being covered up to the board.

1.0
23 May 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Hazelcast started out in 2013 as a company with a beloved product, ambitious goals, and an engineering culture second to none. The best low-level Java experts flocked to it, joining the original Turkish team. The original team set the tone of warm, honest respect for the colleague, while also brimming with enthusiasm to make a product that was great both at the engineering level and for the end-user. It used to be an exhilarating pleasure to work for Hazelcast. Many of these cultural moments reverberate through the company to this day, as a dying echo of the beloved past.

Cons

In 2020, after a change of management, the great culture started dissipating. Mutual trust was replaced with strict regulation imposed top-down. People were made to sign documents about policies they didn't agree with; only lip service was paid to their gripes. The encouragement to speak your mind was replaced by a policy that you should better hold your tongue, lest someone get offended. Etc. The product of the company was left adrift, innovation came to a freeze, while effort was redirected into building the company's superficial image (mission/vision statement, visual branding, messaging and narrative). These changes resulted in the loss of all the best reasons to join Hazelcast today. You can expect a menial job with a meager compensation package. Anything you may have read about the greatness of Hazelcast before 2020 no longer exists and almost all the people who made it that way are gone by now.

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Glassdoor has 68 Hazelcast reviews submitted anonymously by Hazelcast employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Hazelcast is right for you.