If you believe in the company's mission or want part of a soap opera, Ancestry is perfect
Pros
* Product: I believe that Ancestry’s business actually does good in the world. Ancestry’s product helps connect their customer with their loved ones. How often do you have customers who crying tears of joy from your work’s mission? * CEO: Margo, our new CEO, started recently. So far, she has been doing a pretty good job at cleaning up the mess that the previous execs made. I have faith in her ability to lead the company towards a better light. * Internship: Interns are spoiled and learn a lot. I think Ancestry’s internship program has matured a lot and would be a good place to apply to.
Cons
* Glassdoor Reviews: A lot of the recent 5-star reviews here are BS. With the influx of bad reviews, a lot of managers have been asking employees for good reviews. They go out of their way to ask the interns to review the company because interns have good experiences with their internship here. * Product: In my opinion, there’s some limitations to how an engineer can contribute to the product. DNA is mostly selling DNA kits and the family history platform is built out. Most of the work is just either adding some features to the bread and butter or building tools to try to clean up the mess at the company. I like the mission but I don’t feel like I’m part of it. * Management: With the exception of the new CEO, the execs are terrible. They are so out of touch with what goes on with regular employees. When an anonymous employee asked a genuine question about this, the interim CEO called his question BS in front of the whole company. * Recently, the company had a massive layoff in February. The layoff was sudden and didn’t follow any procedures like PIP that was in place and as one employee described it, “it felt as if we were dragged out in the middle of the night and shot.” Some execs responded that the people who were laid off are welcome to reapply to the company for open positions. Some of the responses were so ridiculous that it felt like they were trying to cover up bad decisions the way that they would with their children. * Engineering: There is no standard other than “do this and figure it out yourself.” It is an uphill battle to get anything done and some teams find loopholes in order to be able to do their work. The company is 25 years old and the amount of technical debt and poor engineering decisions is staggering. It feels that some engineers are making technical decisions based on paradigms from the early 2000’s. There is tension between the teams between Utah and San Francisco teams. * Recruiting: The company is bleeding talent. Experienced engineers are leaving all the time. The company is starting to offer RSU’s to employees in general (before, it was only for directors) and it is of my opinion that this is a move to counter the exodus of engineers. The recruiting here is so disjointed that sometimes you don’t know what kind of engineering position that you’re interning the candidate for. Some of the worst engineers that I have had the displeasure of working with do interviews and I can only feel empathy for the candidates on the other side. * Benefits: With the exception of HR-sponsored benefits like health insurance, a lot of the perks are bare-minimum offerings so that they can put them on paper. 1. Snacks and drinks? The SF office is overcrowded and the refrigerators and snack bars are empty by lunch. 2. Gym reimbursement? Have fun getting all of your inquiries ignored. Your claim also won’t be declined. Instead, it will just be ignored so you’ll never know the status (since your emails are ignored).
