Alarm.com Software Developer reviews

4.2

96% would recommend to a friend

(53 total reviews)

Steve Trundle

96% approve of CEO

59% positive business outlook

Software Developer employees have rated Alarm.com with 4.2 out of 5 stars, based on 53 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Software Developer professionals have an excellent working experience there. Alarm.com is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Software Developer professionals compared to other employers within the Information Technology industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

53 reviews
2.0
Sep 25, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* Nice benefits (aside from pay), comfortable office * Ability to work with a variety of technologies that improve customers' lives.

Cons

* Us vs them mentality between software teams. You will often hear comments putting down the manager and engineers of X, Y, or Z team, their code, and their products, especially on shared projects. * "Not my problem" culture where people often race to do the minimum amount of work possible and avoid taking ownership of the projects they are staffed on. This also shows up around the office as people regularly fail to clean up after themselves in common areas. * Terrible planning and project management. Lots of product specifications are poorly thought out and often incomplete before they are handed over to software engineers. Projects are often overzealous in scope and timeline. * There are often only 2-4 UX people employed at a time (when there are significantly more software engineers) and there is a high turn over rate. This means that projects push forward without a clear, thought out design, resulting in frustrating UI as project managers take on the work instead despite their lack of training in UX or experience. * As a Software Engineer your responsibility and workload varies greatly depending on which team you are on. * No clear path for advancement. Becoming as Senior Engineer on one team may have arbitrarily higher or lower requirements than another team as it is up to each manager's discretion. * Pay is not really competitive with other companies in the area.

5.0
Sep 22, 2018

Good tech company

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Has a good work culture and is tech heavy. Area is really nice.

Cons

Might not work on too many different technologies.

2.0
Apr 10, 2017

Engineer Review

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1. This is a great place to start one's career. As a software engineer I have gotten a chance to work on multiple projects where I got to learn a lot of new things and work on large scale projects. I think this is a great place to start for any college grad. 2. Work / Life balance is great - You are not micro-managed and given the flexibility to work on your own schedule. 3. Good Co-Workers - Generally speaking all the people I work with are great. 4. Others - You have a direct line to the VP. You will get to learn a lot if you get an opportunity to work with him. However, I think this is generally not the case anymore.

Cons

Until recently I barely used to think about leaving the company or searching for new opportunities even though I would constantly get bombarded by emails from recruiters. However, this is not the case anymore, and I find myself constantly thinking about this topic. There are 3 main reasons - 1. Career path - The career path is not very well laid out at Alarm. This in all fairness is probably because we are a growing company. However, this is still frustrating and concerning. As other reviewers have also pointed out, promotion process seems a bit ad hoc (not sure if it really is behind the scenes). Few people have been promoted and others who I think should have been promoted by now are still in their old position. In general, I don't think any SE knows what their career trajectory will look like. They are also in the dark about what will be required for a promotion (i.e. what skill sets, experience level etc.). I know just by talking to people that this is a concern for more people than just myself. A lot of people in other departments have left the company recently because of this same reason. 2. Compensation - I don't think the compensation at Alarm is very competitive. In my research I have found that my pay and even the average pay for an SE here is below the average compensation around Tysons and DC area. The raises are not that great which I think makes the problem worse over time. Initially, I used to think that the compensation was at par / competitive. However, every year during my research I find that my pay is below the average around this area. I know that compensation is even a bigger concern in some other departments. 3. Technology - I think this would be true after a while in any company. However, after working here for so long, I find that I am not learning a lot of new things anymore. At this point I have my doubts about how much longer I will be with the company.

Viewing 46 - 48 of 53 Reviews

Glassdoor has 538 Alarm.com reviews submitted anonymously by Alarm.com employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Alarm.com is right for you.