Great Place to Learn, Challenging Place to Stay - Associate Software Engineer Better Direct Employee Review

2.0
Jul 11, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Excellent place for entry-level software engineers to gain hands-on experience. - Small engineering team provides opportunities to work across the full stack and contribute to many parts of the development process. - Developers are given meaningful responsibilities early, making it a good environment for building technical skills. - Exposure to a variety of technologies and projects that helped accelerate my growth as an engineer.

Cons

- Workplace cleanliness was a persistent issue. For approximately six months, there was an ongoing pest infestation that continued despite multiple reports to management and HR. It created an uncomfortable work environment and, on at least one occasion, caused our team to leave a meeting because of a roach in the room. - Employee concerns did not always feel like a priority. I was initially discouraged from contacting HR about workplace issues, and when I eventually did, there was little visible improvement. - As a small company, there were instances where favoritism appeared to affect accountability and decision-making. - Engineering processes became less structured over time, including the discontinuation of Scrum without a clear replacement. - Employees were occasionally asked to sign employment-related agreements with little notice and limited time to review them, which felt unnecessarily high-pressure. - Communication between management and the engineering team could be improved, and developers often felt blamed for issues outside their control.

Explore other reviews about Better Direct

5.0
Oct 15, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Everyone enjoys flexible hours, with even more freedom for the Engineering team due to the nature of their work. - Opportunity to work hands-on with the latest technologies and hardware. - Face new challenges regularly and apply emerging technologies directly within real-world business environments. - Experience the complete product lifecycle — from talking to clients, writing and testing code, deploying solutions, managing performance, to continuous improvement based on user feedback.

Cons

If you prefer relying on expensive third-party tools or off-the-shelf solutions, this may not be the right fit. Here, we engineer everything in-house — from code and security to deployments — using on-prem servers and our private cloud infrastructure, which we manage in house.

2.0
May 11, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There a lot of room to learn about Federal Contracts, business, and technology. You’ll gain a great network in the Federal Sector and with major distributors and manufacturers. The coworkers are very good people and are willing to help you out.

Cons

Management does an awful job. They set you up for failure. They don’t know how to lead properly. You could be having a great week and they always try to find something to hold it against you and hopefully get rid of you. There always was a constant feeling of getting fired over anything. The president of the company blindly puts his trust on the wrong people to manage the sales teams. One of the managers will go on a termination spree from one day to another just because she feels like it. I seriously don’t understand how the president can trust a manager like that when she gets rid of half of her team. You will also have zero room for growth. You can potentially stay as a sales executive for your entire time at the company.

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