Culture can feel a little stiff sometimes, like overly professional. Also the company hasn't invested as much as it could in making processes more efficient and improving internal tooling. Most likely a product of immensely fast growth.
Edit: after reading some other reviews, I want to add some more details. There is a contingent of jaded old-guard OG employees that are upset the company isn't the same company they joined when they were employee no. 50 and their boss's boss was Jay Kreps himself. They are upset about the very existence of middle management at the company. They are upset that coordinating with other teams is harder now. I get it. If you are the kind of person who wants to work at a 50 person company, you are probably not going to enjoy working at a 1000+ person company. Only reason they are still here is because of IPO potential. So if you join Confluent, you have to tolerate these people and their mildly toxic attitudes. Personally, not a big deal for me.
Confluent's not perfect, and there are certainly pain points, growing pains, dysfunctional processes, questionable hires, and bungled projects. Every company has this though. What makes Confluent special is we notice the problems and fix them quickly. Upper management is swift and decisive, the engineers are truly world-class, we are all aligned on the mission and we are making it happen.
