Clearwater Analytics (CWAN) reviews

Clearwater is undergoing a long-term hiring surge. Our "Careers" page currently has about 100 listings, which is pretty remarkable for a company of ~1400. If you're considering one of these positions, please use this section as a reference to gauge the trajectory of the company and make an informed decision. First off, I suggest you look at the trends of Clearwater's Glassdoor ratings. Nearly every category has seen a substantial decline since Q4 2019. Some examples: - Recommend to a Friend: ~90% (Q4 2019) -> 55% (Q2 2021) - Work/Life Balance: ~4.4 -> 3.3 stars - Senior Management: ~4.1 -> 3.0 stars - Career Opportunities: ~4.2 -> 3.3 stars You might think these declines could be attributed to the pandemic, work-from-home fatigue, etc. This is not the case. From my perspective in Development, here's the sequence of major events: - Q1 2020 saw an ill-conceived reorganization of the Development department that broke up strong teams, moved domain experts to different teams/projects, and killed progress on many bugs/initiatives lost in old work queues. - Summer 2020 saw a new CTO join, shortly followed by the departure of the Development leaders responsible for the first reorganization, shortly followed by ANOTHER reorganization. Teams did NOT reform as they were before the first reorganization, so many teams still lack knowledge of their own domains and projects. (I should mention that documentation is not Clearwater's strong suit, so projects have a VERY steep learning curve.) - Q3 2020 saw an announcement that all QAs would be let go at the end of the year, and the overnight firing of all Development team leads who also served as QAs. Several of these former team leads (who had been at the company for many years) were offered other jobs as domain experts weeks later - as far as I know, none accepted these new roles. Some of these newly vacant team lead positions were still unfilled 6 months later. - Q4 2020 saw an announcement that Clearwater would be migrating a public cloud provider that was NOT the one we were told almost a year earlier. Thousands of hours were spent prepping for the move to the other cloud provider, only to then be kept in limbo for about 6 months as leadership changed their mind on providers. The deadline for Clearwater to migrate our entire system to the new provider has not changed, despite losing nearly a year to this decision. - March 2021 saw leadership inform employees that the work-from-home policy excitedly announced in July 2020 would not be enacted. Originally, we were told any employees could choose a fully-remote, fully-in-office, or hybrid schedule; now, we are told 3+ days a week remote is for "exceptional" scenarios only. Honestly, I wouldn't mind this policy had it not been a reversal of what was announced 9 months earlier. Again, leadership slowly changed their mind on this, leaving employees in limbo. During this waiting period, several of my colleagues left Clearwater for companies that weren't being equivocal about their remote-work policies. There's much more I could say about why Clearwater is trending downhill, but I think some other reviewers have stated it well. Most of the more lengthy recent reviews are pretty accurate. You'll notice recent positive reviews are very light on details. Parting advice: If you're looking for a role that isn't some flavor of "Software Engineer", I would stay away from Clearwater for the foreseeable future. The system will frustrate you, you will work unpaid overtime as a result, and Development leadership is not prioritizing the work that would be necessary to tackle these problems. (I will mention that Sales seems to be doing alright, judging by the steady stream of new clients.) If you ARE looking for a "Software Engineer" position, make sure you know what you're getting into. It will be a very difficult ramp-up period, and you will be very annoyed by leadership decisions past, present, and future. I would recommend negotiating your salary offer upwards (and don't be shy about the amount). Clearwater is desperate to hire capable engineers (especially in the Boise area), and doesn't seem to mind salary discrepancies within roles/levels. Raises can be lackluster and the process is very opaque, so initial negotiation is your best shot. Also keep in mind that base salary is the vast majority of compensation (bonuses are very rare, and stock/equity is not a thing here), and that Boise housing costs are rising rapidly. Time that engineers spend on-call for their applications is also not compensated, and middle-of-the-night alerts are fairly regular. In short, you'll want to be well-compensated for the frustrations you'll face at Clearwater. If you do join, stay prepared for interviews in case you want to leave.

**tldr** Clearwater doesn't respect workers' time or contributions Clearwater doesn't engender trust and cooperation amongst its employees Clearwater doesn't give you the chance to build software you can be proud of Clearwater doesn't care about the experience of the users of its products Clearwater doesn't give its management the training they need to be successful **What It Was** For a dev, Clearwater Analytics had been a wonderful place to work. Devs trusted and supported each other, teams maintained a sense of autonomy, and individuals felt that their contributions could cause change, both in strategy and implementation. **What It Is** The former Clearwater is completely gone. Granted, this Clearwater really only existed for developers. Client service employees have, at least during my 5 years, always been treated as replaceable, consistently asked to be the only ones to stay late, work longer hours, or take the fall for failures to meet deadlines and commitments. Upon leaving I can safely say that they had never felt more disregarded or less trusted. Turnover rates are abysmal. As users of and partners in our products and offerings, Clearwater Analytics is failing its Client Services employees. Development got a taste of this poor thought for employees with an ill-planned, unnecessary, change-for-the-sake-of-change reorg. This new org structure has hobbled innovation, hampered creativity, and killed opportunity for individual contribution at the company. Unless you are in upper management you will *not* be able to make changes you deem necessary in the projects you create and maintain because the ownership of these projects is now distributed across several groups. Everything is designed by committee. Because of this distributed model, the tragedy of the commons takes its toll, leaving every product the lowest common denominator with no focus on actual users, only on checking boxes on contracts. There is no pride of work here. Not only has this new org structure curtailed creativity and reduced the quality of our products, it has also pitted teams against teams, competing for scarce resources for differing goals of what our products should be. Further micromanagement, not from your actual manager but from stakeholders, leads to further distrust between teams and coworkers. As a further proof of desire of profits over people, they recently introduced stack ranking (you know, the much maligned tool from Microsoft?) which brings new fears of employees competing for managerial approval in a zero sum game. One thing that Clearwater has never had is any formal managerial training. For development, typically, your manager is/was a senior dev. They know how code works, but by and large they have little clue how to manage people and some have no idea how to even interact with people in a healthy way. The Peter Principle of being promoted past your point of effectiveness absolutely makes an appearance here. **Smaller issues** No compensation for on-call work Focus on periphery aspects of people management like free snacks and coffee machines instead of systemic changes required to actually make Clearwater a better place to work. **Questions that you must have them answer if you decide to interview:** Describe the last time you had a conflict between you and someone not on your team? How was it resolved? How do users provide feedback for the tool I'll be working on? When and how will it be addressed? What if I see a change as necessary? How will that be addressed? Can I meet my potential manager? Do you seem like the kind of manager who would throw me under the bus for stack ranking? **Summary** Although there are good people here, the system itself at Clearwater Analytics is broken and will not lend itself easily to a healthy career, but instead will lead to a deep desire to change everything but without any of the tools, processes, or ability to do so.