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 Buildfire is not completely out of date, but I can’t imagine too many developers being interested in polishing their Angular 1 skills.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 Most of the SDK is undocumented or completely out of date in the current documentation.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.