Pros
If you want pros, go read one of the other glowing reviews. I'm not here to paint a rosy picture. I'm here as a word of warning.
Cons
**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.
