Generous but frustrating place to work as software developer - Senior Principal Software Engineer Dell Technologies Employee Review

3.0
Sep 21, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

At least before I was laid off in February 2024: Good compensation . Good benefits. Flexible work hours

Cons

Bad developer experience (if you care to develop quickly and properly), because of: Very bad management, especially from the technical point of view. No concrete responsibilities - everyone is responsible for everything, which makes everyone responsible for nothing, making it next to impossible to quickly find the right SME for the problem at hand. Outdated development practices and technologies. Sticking to convenient technologies, instead of the appropriate ones. Outdated management mentality. Low quality of programmers (hence colleagues). Very high throughput of people. No specialization - tasks are thrown at you without regard to your specialization. Your colleague might have to do your job (using JavaScript, which she does not know) in a week instead of a few hours, because you are given her tasks, which you also will be completing 10 times longer because you do not know Python. Hence - tens of hours of lost time (Michael Dell pays dearly for each), bad quality of code, etc... No developer workstations with Linux or Mac - the company is stuck to very glitchy Windows-based machines with very resource-greedy security tools (e.g. bootstraping a project takes 30 minutes instead of 2 due to antivirus software) which I had to restart almost every day, and develop instead remotely on Linux virtual servers. Terrible communication and response time among colleagues - nobody is in a hurry, probably thinking that Michael will pay any way (or lay you off, because you are too expensive). At the moment the company actively sheds both bad "apples" and good but expensive ones in hundreds and thousands, shifting development to India, whose developers are much cheaper, but mostly very slow and of low quality.

Explore other reviews about Dell Technologies

5.0
Jan 27, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Come here for good benefits and work culture.

Cons

Working with the unknown may seem overwhelming.

1.0
May 15, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Today? A job that helps pay the bills.

Cons

The culture completely changed circa 2022. Layoffs happen every month in small batches, so they are not covered in the news with big layoffs, but the total over the last couple of years is 10-20K people per year. Current employees that I still talk to live in constant fear of being laid off. The salary gap between employees in the same function is ridiculous and discriminatory. As a leader, when I'd raise it with HR, it was never addressed. Had a situation where I was hiring an underpaid employee from another team. I wanted to give her a 60% pay increase just to match what her peers on my team made, and I had the budget to do so. HR denied my request to do that raise and only gave her a 20% increase. They didn't want to send the "wrong message" that she was underpaid before (which she was) or that other employees could expect that level of pay raise in internal promotions (regardless of whether they should). They have to come into the office 5 times/week, even though Michael Dell once made fun of CEOs that didn't adopt hybrid/remote work. Just last week, I had a former colleague resign because the stress in the current environment was taking a toll on her mental health. If you have any other option, I'd highly recommend you don't take a job at Dell.

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