Great until it wasn't - Software Engineer Samsara Employee Review

1.0
Jul 16, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Competitive salary + benefits - Some incredibly friendly and helpful ICs. Many of the smartest and most fun people I've worked with in my life are here

Cons

The culture has completely flipped on its head. A company that I thought was a unicorn at first in prioritizing people and treating its employees like actual adults went from just that to a cutthroat place where the only thing that mattered was seeing stakeholder value go up. The culture went from mutual respect and a willingness to help everyone to micromanaging (keeping metrics of AI tool acceptance rate and putting a threshold on it), cutting people after years of solid output if they started to dip at all, and allowing more senior engineers to be as rude as they want to newer people as long as they were technically correct. I can't understand why Samsara would shift so far from what got them to the place they were at circa early 2024.

Explore other reviews about Samsara

5.0
Jun 19, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great company solving real problems for the physical operations economy

Cons

Fast growth, innovation focused. Not for everyone!

2.0
Jul 9, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Innovative product, constantly growing the platform

Cons

Compensation doesn’t feel competitive for the workload and expectations of the role. Frequent annual changes—including territory realignments, account books, verticalization, and quota adjustments—create unnecessary disruption and make it difficult to build long-term customer relationships and pipeline. The company has grown rapidly, but account distribution hasn’t always kept pace with headcount, leaving many reps competing for limited opportunity and making OTE difficult to achieve consistently. The Team Lead role is one of the biggest pain points. Team Leads are expected to operate like frontline managers without the compensation or authority that comes with a management position. They carry a fully ramped quota while also traveling, mentoring new hires, leading office hours, answering rep questions, supporting onboarding, and taking on enablement responsibilities. While these leadership opportunities can be rewarding, they often come at the expense of selling time and make it significantly harder to hit quota.

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