Pros
I’ve worked with a lot of great people while at Nerdery. There were some smart people there that really cared and it showed. It was because of those people that I was able to grow. I also haven’t seen another software company promote people internally as well as Nerdery does, for the most part (see below). There are some really interesting and engaging projects as well, but they seem few and far between. There was some focus on training, but only if it was something the company was going to focus on. “Soft” perks such as dogs, food, and beer.
Cons
It’s been mentioned a lot, but pay could be better. They recognized it was an issue and said they were working on it, but it rarely felt like progress was made. Even promotions ended up just being a standard merit increase. Even when it came to hardware, it was impossible to get a new machine in order to do your work because it wasn’t in the budget. While there were some awesome projects at the company, the focus had shifted towards CMS work that they could turn out quickly. Unfortunately Nerdery had decided a while back it wasn’t interested in this kind of work and laid off a bunch of CMS developers and projects. There’s been a recent shift towards hiring junior talent. This was exciting at first, but it seems like the decision was mostly around reducing costs. Often times these people would not get the support they needed and were thrown onto projects by themselves. Mentorship is mentioned a lot, but resources (especially time) aren’t allocated towards it. They also like to talk about their diversity initiative, but it felt they were trying to check a box. There were talented woman who were overlooked for promotions. Internal processes are a mess. Trying to make any changes around the company are met with hoops to jump through and an unclear process. Even as a principal level engineer I found it difficult to make meaningful change. Nobody seems to be able to answer questions or you get different answers depending on who you ask. Nerdery markets itself as a partner, but often makes choices that are more profitable for Nerdery and not in the best interest of the client. Often times suggestions or warnings are made by devs and ignored by delivery leads or client partners. Nerdery also likes to market itself as innovative, but Nerdery as of late has lacked in that. It seemed like they were more interested in comparing themselves to other companies than forging a path driven by innovation. That lack of innovations comes into play in market offerings. They played catch up in Cloud and are still failing on putting out a decent offering. Often times they were chasing market trends than focusing on what they were good at. Nerdery has become focused on profit over everything. It became painfully obvious that they were trying to make their bottom line look good in order to sell. Talented people are treated as just another cost, just another number, and they lost a lot of talent because of it. Upper management doesn’t seem to be interested in change. They surround themselves with just more of the same, confirming their biases. Even the internal surveys they would twist the numbers to fit their narrative. A couple years I would have recommended Nerdery as a place to grow, but with the recent shifts in priorities, I can no longer say that. If you’re an up and coming developer, look at other places for opportunities.