Toxic environment, not just a few bad apples - Engineer Tempus AI Employee Review

2.0
Jul 18, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* Helping improve cancer treatment by selling anonymized data to big pharma * Coolest mission of any company in the city * Massive valuation with a product to back it up * Free barista, smoothie Fridays

Cons

* Experience varies widely by job role at Tempus. If you're in the lower class, it will be awful every day and you'll absolutely regret accepting the offer. If you're in management or a more senior engineer, it will be tolerable or even good. Everyone is under massive time pressure with impossible expectations of your time with no exception. * Toxic people who meet deadlines are kept around. If you want to be outright rude but are a good engineer, this is the place for you. * Culture is speed over quality. This is alarming when dealing with the world's largest cancer genomic dataset. * Clueless managers / directors / c-level people are tolerated and more management are hired to "neutralize" them rather than letting go the cruft. There is a glut of middle management without enough actual workers. * Toxic environment for women and people of color. They never seem to stick around yet no one in leadership sees this as a massive red flag. * Actively discouraged by engineering managers from writing tests or any security features that would mean slower delivery of a feature

Explore other reviews about Tempus AI

5.0
Jul 4, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good place to work at, very impactful work.

Cons

No cons i can think of tbh.

1.0
Jul 19, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* The short seller report said the executives have a "history of promoting disruptive technology companies, cashing out early, and leaving public shareholders with losses or lackluster returns". Taking this into account as well as other factors, I was able to cash out RSUs at much higher share prices than the stock is currently trading at.

Cons

* The other reviews that mention bullying and verbal or psychological abuse are along the lines of what I saw. In addition, it seems to be a feature and not a bug. In other words, the people in charge seem to believe that people work better when being abused. Instead of using regular means of incentives or motivation like pay or enjoyable work environment, fear of abuse or losing one's job is the main tool of getting others to do work. If you're not at least enabling bullying and abuse, you'll always be on the outside and never trusted. * This company changed its name from Tempus Labs to Tempus AI in what seems to be a big grift. The stock jumped for a bit because Nancy Pelosi bought the stock (yay corruption). The engineering is a joke and often engineers have their performance judged by non technical managers who joined some lab company called Tempus Labs years ago. In all fairness, the people often in charge of engineering decisions didn't join a tech company so they're setup to fail.

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