Black Rifle Coffee reviews

Alas, the dream ended and turned into some weird POG-larper-fueled micro-managed, cowboy coding, nightmare. Code refactored and merged at night by dev-management led to broken builds in the morning. Daily threats from the director level for meeting attendance (ie. "1 minute late and you're fired"). Attempts by management to use Agile/Scrum led to weird velocity expectations and ultimately back to waterfall style planning (ie. nothing got completed). Low pay (but hey, we're working for a cause, eh?). Benefits aren't spectacular. Not allowed to purchase stock. Promises upon hiring not fulfilled. Working nights & weekends. Vacations not allowed.

Management on this team has fired 4 people inside a year. The engineering team's processes led to severe dysfunction. While software engineers in tech, especially on either coast, typically expect Agile Scrum project management, this team transitioned from unrecognizable project management process to a strict Agile Scrum process, only to consider abandoning it due to supposed insufficient velocity. On one occasion, management advised us not to take any PTO and to work nights and weekends until we met the project deadline months away. Management worked nights and weekends consistently, despite advising against it, pushing code past midnight without any pull request reviews consistently. Often the next morning code was broken. Engineering leadership, from team management level, exhibited toxic, command and control-style leadership, lacking adherence to servant leadership philosophy. There was no budget for continuing education like you would expect elsewhere for getting credentialed on the "fill in the blank" stack. Compensation was underwhelming, with salaries 20% below market value. Remote employee salaries were based on Salt Lake City rates, which are among the lowest in the nation for software engineering. I was denied a reasonable salary increase 1.3 years into the position, based on salaries where I live , even after accepting a 20% cut at the start of employment. In almost a year and a half, I received no bonus, and there was no mention of any bonus rate in my contract. Beware of recruiters making promises. Management-level communication of expectations was lacking; I was blindsided by write-ups claiming underperformance, while 1-on-1s with the management never mentioned any issues related to underperformance. I was written up twice without prior warning. I was terminated after expressing concerns about what I perceived as harassment by management, who took over a sprint body of work, micromanaging without communication and refactoring my code, which broke my follow-on PRs. On the same day, during our sprint retrospective ceremony, I addressed my disappointment with management. Although this is typically a safe space, management issued a written disciplinary action that day. I refused to sign it and was terminated without HR present on the call. I was told not to "request mast" (as the military says) and discuss issues with management to higher-ups. However, given the treatment I was experiencing, it's unclear why anyone would be discouraged from doing so. Overall, my experience at BRCC was positive working with all the other individual contributors, but toxic management ruined the whole experience for me.