Downward Slide, But Could Still Reverse - Software Engineer Clearwater Analytics (CWAN) Employee Review

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.