Decent Compensation, Horrible Everything Else - Senior Software Engineer Verkada Employee Review

1.0
Sep 9, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Not many come to mind - Decent comp, although the prohibition of COLA raises and insidiously slow stock vesting schedule make it worse than it appears - The spiral staircase at HQ is neat - Seriously, that's about it

Cons

- Engineering org - Planning is done at the granularity of quarters, down to engineering tasks, leading any tasks that take longer shorter than a quarter, longer than a quarter, or which overlap 2 quarters as poorly tracked if tracked at all - Code review and design review are looked at with disdain, as many engineers will be struggling to wrap up poorly planned quarter-based work - Turnover is high, such that most questions about how to maintain or improve existing services or features garner "so-and-so worked a lot on that, but they left a while back" - Engineering leadership has a strong aversion to agile software development (even thought their current planning is dreadful) and any flexibility with working-from-home, in stark contrast to successful software companies - Younger or new-grad engineers, who can often be empowered to learn and grow in startups, are not being taught any coding or design standards and are instead learning bad habits about rushing out unmaintainable, barely working software to meet quarterly goals set by upper management - The engineering org isn't growing and is clearly not a priority of leadership

Explore other reviews about Verkada

5.0
Jul 11, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Potential for growth and great compensation if you get a good territory

Cons

8-5 hard office hours, dialing, KPIs.

1.0
Jul 4, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Some of the people are kind, intelligent, and very thoughtful, which made the rest manageable when it unbearable Fancy perks: food, coffee bar

Cons

This is the worst company I have ever worked for. Inexperienced leadership and middle management creates an air of stress, anxiety, and frustration across all areas of the workplace. People often snap at each other, burn out, and successes are rarely recognized or celebrated. There is no sense of team unity. I even witnessed a monkey being brought into the office to be posed for photos during an end of quarter celebration. There is little flexibility for people not being in-office due to family/outside issues. There are too many meetings with no clear organization or purpose, and messages/emails are often sent late into the night, on holidays, and on weekends. I wish someone had warned me not to work here before I started, it was some of the worst days of my life.

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