It's alright but you can do much better if you're a software engineer - Software Engineer Polly Employee Review

3.0
Jul 23, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The engineering culture was very strong. Blameless when something went wrong, serious attention paid to tech debt, and reasonable requirements / expectations for sprint planning. Work/life balance was good as a result. Very collaborative environment with strong support for pair programming and mentorship. It's a good place to be as an intern or an associate SWE (well unless you were the associate SWE who got laid off a month ago anyway), as you will learn a lot and the tech stack is very modern with a strong emphasis on quality, but due to how the overall company is managed it's going to be time to move on after a year or so.

Cons

Almost all of the cons are at the company level. The benefits are expensive and a dumpster fire in terms of quality. I just found out that I have to pay $75 to roll over my 401k funds into a personal IRA because their 401k provider they just switched to, Newport Group, is apparently a bottom of the barrel garbage 401k provider. I've never had to play a fee to do a roll over until now. Just wow. Also raises are pretty much nonexistent here even if you get a good performance review. The CEO made a spiel in one of the town halls about how he knows that there's an inflationary period right now, and that would be taken into account with raises, but yeah no that was not true. I had a good performance review and my raise was the lowest I've ever received at any company. Just assume whatever salary you're hired at is what you're going to make for your tenure here. Also in terms of benefits, the "Unlimited" PTO they just switched to is a scam. I had time off approved in advance by my manager, which she reneged on at the last minute, and then pretended she never told me that time off was approved. I never took time off after because why bother trying? Just left. The worst part, which I saved for last, is management. They are completely and utterly clueless. They did a reorg every 3 months like clockwork since I joined, I guess magically thinking that a reorg would start making the company successful, and the most recent reorg basically just reversed the previous reorg. They also did a round of layoffs a month ago, which included an associate SWE and QA engineer, so I would be very cautious joining right now. They claim to have plenty of money in the bank, but they laid off around 7% of employees, so who knows.

Explore other reviews about Polly

5.0
Dec 19, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Fast Paced Small Team Hands-on Mentorship

Cons

I have nothing to complain about Polly

3.0
Jul 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great group of people to work with in engineering, great codebase to work in

Cons

Lots of product churn. There were a number of times where we would work very hard on a feature for multiple months where it would never leave a pilot phase if it ever even saw the light of day. Very disheartening to work on features like that. Also many many rounds of layoffs, in addition to lots of isolated layoffs for people who were still performing well in their role.

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