No Free Lunch - Software Developer MeridianLink Employee Review

High-paced organization on path to growth. Remote work is awesome but also plenty of opportunities to see co-workers in person. New leadership with eye to service and innovation. Company has been around for over 20 years but still operates like a start up so plenty of chances to have influence.

Competing priorities, sometimes budget is hard to come by. Slow planning process.

-Remote-first, WFH stipend, decent PTO, Great Place to Work Certified. -Not too woke for a CA company. -Recently went private which hopefully will be a good thing. -Good work-life balance, I never work more than 40/week. -If you like AI-assisted development, Github Copilot (for everyone) and Claude Code (for seniors) are provided. -They haven't had layoffs since 2024.

-Revolving door of upper leadership. Brand new CTO; who knows what he'll do? -Many dev teams are majority cheap offshore contractors. Minimal feeling of being on a team; I don't know most of my coworkers. No teambuilding activities. -Reliance on poor metrics like code coverage and velocity. Managing by metrics and dashboards. -Minimal salary raises. -CEO sends out motivational "rah rah" emails every Friday. -Disconnect between what developers are experiencing and what upper management thinks is going on. -Company is going "all in" on AI, and have unrealistic expectations of what AI can accomplish. Like they think they can get A-level work out of C-level developers through AI usage. AI fatigue is real. -Not all managers are emotionally intelligent or even technically adept.