BuildFire reviews

3.6

62% would recommend to a friend

(7 total reviews)
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Ian Blair

77% approve of CEO

60% positive business outlook

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7 reviews

Reviews about "Compensation"

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1.0
Jun 4, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The only pro I had was the team that I was working with (other devs to be precise in the terms of team)

Cons

Work life Balance: 1 / 10 Projects are never assigned with a written specification. You will receive creative documentation, but the underlying functionality has not been thought about at all, and thats up to you (and your team lead) to figure out . At buildfire if your project is late, it’s up to you to make delivery on schedule. This means you will spend countless extra hours fixing bugs, finding edge cases, and rewriting features you already built multiple times to accommodate changes that 9/10 times came after you already started working on the project and are halfway through it. Scope creeping is another major issue here, apart from the fact that non technical people have a say in how the project will be done. Constant changes of the scope, new features and requests popping up midway down the sprint and stuff like that. The specifications will often come with a number of obvious bugs in them from the start should you receive any. The CTO has to approve all work, you will very likely have to make a number of changes by the time he sees it because there are no specs for him to review when the project is initiated. Technology Stack: 3/10 Buildfire SDK Amazon Serverless (AWS) Javascript Angular 1 Node.js SQL Most startups are associated with being on the cutting edge of technology. Buildfire is completely out of date. You’ll spend most of your time building features around their buggy and unintuitive “Build Fire SDK”. Most of the SDK is undocumented or completely out of date in the current documentation, and what is documented is mostly inaccurate. Overall a buggy, unintuitive and dull tool. Leadership: 0 / 10 “Be hard on your team, but back them up when it comes time to report to the investors”. Longevity: 0 / 10 This company has to get an investor involved for every single project. It’s a 6 year old company, this is not a good sign of financial health. I attended many presentations on marketing and growth. Many fancy charts etc were shown, but at the end of the day the most interested market in Buildfire currently is high school students without a budget looking for a free app. Overall happiness: 0 / 10 Most of the people at the company I’ve talked to are very unhappy there. Compensation: 2 / 10 They pay below market value, and they expect everyone to know each other's jobs and you will work many extra hours. Also the onboarding process and training is nonexistent. For onboarding and training purposes you're given a couple of links with some docs and training videos (mostly not helpful at all), and they have a Youtube playlist with about a dozen of short videos explaining (tutorial like) the workings of the "BuildFire SDK" (which also is not helpful at all).

1.0
Aug 2, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Programmers tend to select jobs on similar criteria, I can say this confidently having now been coding professionally for over 6 years. The criteria are as follows: Equipment: 10/10 I had a really nice macbook pro while I was employed there. Not everyone gets a laptop though, so cross your fingers you get one.

Cons

Work life Balance: 1 / 10 Projects are rarely assigned with a written specification. You will receive creative documentation, but usually the functionality underlying the skin has not been thought about. At buildfire if your project is late, it’s up to you to make delivery on schedule. This means you will spend countless extra hours fixing bugs, finding edge cases, and rewriting features you already built multiple times to accommodate changes. The specifications will often come with a number of obvious bugs in them from the start should you receive any. The CTO has to approve all work, you will very likely have to make a number of changes by the time he sees it because there are no specs for him to review when the project is initiated. This is a bad process and it costs the company thousands of dollars. Technology Stack: 5 / 10 Buildfire SDK Amazon Serverless (AWS) Javascript Angular 1 Node.js SQL Most startups are associated with being on the cutting edge of technology. Buildfire is not completely out of date, but I can’t imagine too many developers being interested in polishing their Angular 1 skills. Other than that you’ll spend most of your time building features around their buggy and unintuitive “Build Fire SDK”. Most of the SDK is undocumented or completely out of date in the current documentation. Most of the documentation was written by developers who do not speak English as a primary language and lack the ability to explain a concept in English. Culture: 2 / 10 I met some real friendly people at Buildfire but mostly the culture is sugar coated so it tastes sweet initially when you start to chew on it you taste bitter harsh flavors. You may arrive thinking it’s an amazing place only to leave months later wishing you had just landed somewhere else. The culture is very corporate as well, you have to watch what you say and who you say it to. Leadership: 0 / 10 The leadership is very poor. I’ve never worked at a company where so much yelling occurred. Call me crazy, but I just can’t justify having that kind of attitude at work, yelling does not solve problems. Unfortunately, that is the technique employed by the company, this was even explained to me by management. “Be hard on your team, but back them up when it comes time to report to the investors”. This mantra is fit for the gym, but not a workplace. Longevity: 0 / 10 This company has to get an investor involved for every single project. It’s a 6 year old company, this is not a good sign of financial health. I attended many presentations on marketing and growth. Many fancy charts etc were shown, but at the end of the day the most interested market in Buildfire currently is high school students without a budget looking for a free app. Overall happiness: 0 / 10 Most of the people at the company I’ve talked to are very unhappy there. Compensation: 2 / 10 They pay below market value, and they expect everyone to know each other's jobs and you will work many extra hours. The pay schedule is twice a month 1st and the 15th. My paycheck always came in at different times.

2.0
Jun 22, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Small company, startup culture, great office location and views, great people (for the most part) and cool albeit complex product.

Cons

Cutthroat organization who does constant hiring, only keeping people they deem to be the absolute best and cut the rest. 15 new hires in the last 6 months alone, a red flag in my opinion. Salary is too low for cost of living in San Diego and California taxes. 40k base salary with not a lot of commissions potential for this particular role. Feels like they want an all-star who will work for peanuts. Absolutely terrible training, there was no training program in place until the week I was let go, which was not even a full month. Felt like I was filling in for their top SDR who left when I started until I was replaced by someone else who they deemed a better fit on their end. Expectations of me as a new hire were out of reach and conflicting. If you get hired here, be sure to be on top of it with your learning of the product and be prepared to be a brown noser. Conflicting information on expectations of my role from different superiors. Sales superiors don't care about you at all, only about how well you perform. Chaotic, fast-paced and fast-changing startup culture that can change it's motives, policies, ideas and most notably expectations in the blink of an eye. States in company handbook that there is a 90 day trial period. which was not even 30 days in my case and that it can terminate employees at any time and for any reason.

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