Pluspunten
TLDR: A good company to start your career if you are fresh out of college or need to take a break from another field or figure your life out. It is not sustainable and has many problems which lead to high turnover. Take what you can get, keep your head down, then move on. Important note on reviews of this company: Any two sentence 4 to 5 star reviews for this company were written by Human Resources or gullible new employees who HR asked to do it. No one has a perfect experience at a company, even the best. It is exceedingly obvious that these reviews are fake. On the other hand, most people come to glassdoor to criticize their own companies rather than praise them, including in this review. Major pros are summarized here but focus is on the negative. Take that into consideration when deciding whether to work here. Perks: Free healthcare, generous vacation policy, free snacks, catered lunch everyday, team and company events are frequent and paid for, professional training fund, other perks typical of a tech company or well funded startup. Fun office if you are in London (wework). Product: Well marketed product with wide range of clients (news, government, corporate). Opportunity to provide critical alerts in intense situations that can make a difference. Hard to see impact most of the time though. Colleagues: Domain experts are across the board highly intelligent, friendly, and motivated individuals with diverse backgrounds in academia, government, and news. Some over reliance on people from select institutions (cough Georgetown cough) and uneven hiring practices. Nature of the work: Covering daily news in a certain region or topic area can be very rewarding and educational depending on your outlook. It can also be exciting when being done in high profile situations. Cost to this is stressful work environment and graphic content on a daily basis. Working with other departments: Domain experts are somewhat isolated but if you take initiative and are based in one of the main offices, you can find opportunities to work with people from Engineering and other departments which can be rewarding.
Minpunten
Graphic content: Make no mistake. If you are a domain expert you will be exposed to extremely graphic content. It can vary depending on your area of expertise but if you cover the the US, middle east, latin america and others to varying degrees. Dead bodies, acts of killing, airstrikes, and other filth that is floating on social media. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you or downplaying it. It is unavoidable and there is little Dataminr or anyone can do to change that. But it takes a toll on people. Dataminr healthcare and some resources are available but company and management are not very cognizant of the effect long term exposure to this can have on an individual. Watching the limbs of people being picked out of rubble, searching for tweets from children reporting a school shooting that you never know may have lived or died, and seeing other forms of carnage and hatred manifesting in the most violent and physical ways possible on a daily basis is neither an enjoyable experience nor a natural phenomenon that people are equipped to process on their own. Poor management -- Execs: Executive team and high level managements take very little interest in domain expert department. The limited interactions are often condescending at worst and at best usually show much they are out of touch with the domain expert work. There is physical separation between these groups in New York which is an obvious factor but given the domain experts critical role behind the product the lack of attention hurts morale. It’s simple, hop on a plane once a year and visit the satellite offices. Spend a few hours with domain experts. Walk to the other new york office and say hi, shake someones hand. Bare minimum goes a long way. Domain expert leadership: Most managers are well meaning and good people but the quality of leadership across the board varies greatly. One in particular has an extremely corrosive effect on the morale of the teams in all offices, has a vindictive personality, and fosters a culture of mistrust, belittlement, and unneeded competition. This person has an outsized role, terrible reputation, and makes it obvious that there is a deep insecurity and hole in their life they are trying to fill by obsessing over their work. Many managers though will support their team members and try to balance between company needs and their people's quality of life. Top domain expert management is well meaning, but needs to pay more attention to the ground level. Unfair hours and burden across offices: Domain experts are split into three offices to ensure 24/7 coverage: London, Seattle, and New York. London works 7 to 3, New York 10 to 6, and Seattle 3 to 11. London by far has the best office culture. Any domain expert would be lucky to work here compared to New York and Seattle. Many company problems still exist, but London management is much better and culture is more friendly. Seattle has the hardest time and its employees are not compensated for what is arguably the worst shift. In most companies that are well funded and care about employee wellbeing, there is differential pay or other small perks to make up for working later hours. Bizarrely, domain experts in Seattle get nothing but actually have to put in more time outside of their shift to attend meetings and carry out other duties. When not directly required, it is heavily emphasized. Wild differences in pay: There is absolutely no fairness in how compensation is given both in terms of salaries and bonuses and raises. If you have a military or government background you will likely be well compensated. If you were a journalist or are coming from academia you will likely be compensated way less regardless of your years of experience, language skills, or other criteria. It is important to keep in mind that salaries are largely dependent on time of hiring, needs of the company, and ability of the employee to negotiate on their own behalf. No one should be faulted for getting as much as they can get, but that aside, there is a major discrepancy. The same comes for bonuses and raises. Employees are frequently passed over for regular raises due to management forgetting or due to a personal dispute with a certain employee. Bonuses can be cut for similar reasons. No avenue for intellectual growth: This is a monitoring job. There is very little time or attention paid to individual research efforts or even those performed in a group. Sadly the company does not invest in research time despite its value to domain expert well being and, more importantly, the sustainability of the product and the resources underpinning its success. Ignore it for too long, people will continue to leave in under a year and the systems you spent so long building and getting permission to sell, will fall apart slowly and surely while you are distracted with the next data set, problem of the week, etc. Little career progression: You can advance from domain expert, to senior domain expert, to deputy team lead, or a team lead. There are limited opportunities to move laterally to other departments within and outside of domain expert dept, but very little listed above will change. Most people leave after a year or go to client engagement (smart move, make it if you can).
