Everybody needs a stepping stone - Software Engineer Barracuda Networks Employee Review

I'll start with the management here - all the way from the executives in HQ to the directors in Ann Arbor. Not only is it factual, but it is obvious that these people have never had any other jobs nor have they ever been a manager before, nor have they been a manager of managers. The people managers here were promoted to management from individual contributors (IC) because they were probably good at writing code. Writing code does not translate to leading teams. Once they were promoted, they never got any mentorship or formal training. This shows in the poor planning of projects, the really poor professional skills, and really terrible manager-to-IC relationships. Also, I'd love to get an explanation of how someone with a few years of experience goes from an IC to manager to director of engineering within 3 years? It's just not realistic in the 'real world.' "Work/Life Balance" is not a thing here. Work will always take precedence to life at Cuda. You are basically on call 24-7-365. If there's a fire - you're getting called by your manager. If there's a customer issue - you're getting called by your manager. If there's a question your manager has about something he can look up in JIRA - you're getting a call from your manager. If you just had a baby and you took all the PTO you had to get some time with your kid and there's a small bug in your code - you're getting a call from your manager. Also, the benefits are a complete joke here. The worst PTO policy I have ever seen, and this is coming from a Silicon Valley company. Good luck having a significant other or a family. Hopefully, nobody gets sick in your family and you can't come into the office... you will hear about it from your manager. The 401k matching is pretty bad, as well. The tech stack that the products are written on are a disaster. The mentality at cuda is to ship it first and fix it later. That means fixing it later never comes, because you're constantly shipping it. This is not a place to learn best practices. Also as an aside - it says something when the founders of the company that is acquired (Bitleap) leave their product (Backup) behind and go work somewhere else. The stock took a nosedive a year ago and the company was put on the 'tightening the belts' budget. The stock recently also took a decent plunge. This is now two years in a row that the stock suffers pretty badly after the annual financials go out. HR is also a mess here. One person didn't get paid their full salary for an entire year because of something they messed up during hiring. Another person was told they were hired on as a senior when in fact they were hired on as junior. For about a year there was no HR present in the Ann Arbor office at all - letting all the bros run wild with their foosball, head butting, and borderline sexual harassment (if not actual sexual harassment) comments. Also this: there is no diversity at Cuda. This is extremely surprising for a company in Ann Arbor. I would say the office is over 90% white male in the 20-30 age group. I can count the women in the entire office on my two hands, and the women of color on one hand. Last but not least: the lights do not come on in this office. There are a select few people who like to work in the dark, so they are loud enough to make it happen for an office of 200+ people (see first paragraph about management).