American corporate being managed as a startup - werkgeversreview Senior Software Engineer bij Align Technology

Great culture and work life balance

No salary adjustment for where you live

It used to be a good company who made a premium product, with smart coworkers, interesting tasks that involved a lot of math problems, with detailed code reviews. It still has generous PTO, sick days and a discounted lunch (in Raleigh office).

Management changed and there is an ongoing optimisation with hidden layoffs / force quits with no severance. Biased performance reviews with high expectations. Frequent goal changes and useless projects that will eventually be terminated and the whole team will be shuffled or dismissed. Complete delivery mess. Left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Knowledge transfer sucks. The only way to understand the feature is to dig into the code (bad for newbies). New unqualified and arrogant low-level managers and team-leads, hide their uselessness on endless meetings, blah-blah-blahing with no real impact just to add visibility. A lot of stress, 5 days from office in an open space with no remote option even for new parents. The base is low with no stocks. Pro-Russian company, previously based in Moscow, relocated the whole office to the US and Europe due to sanctions during Russian-Ukrainian war (they recently laid-off a few Ukrainian guys).