Esri Software Developer reviews

The culture and software process is very 1980s, and things are extraordinarily slow to change. When I started around three and a half years ago my team was one of the very first to be using git. Everyone else was still using starteam. Testing (except for throwing code over the fence at some poor sucker) and ci/cd are almost unheard of. There are also a lot of office politics, and a definite “old boys club.” Finally, getting help or resources from teams outside of your own (and often, even on your own team) is like pulling teeth. It felt like engineers completely ignored my requests or questions until I had demonstrated that I wasn’t an idiot and earned some social capital. Now imagine that you’re working on something that needs to work with Pro, ArcGIS online, the latest version of server, and the sdks. Good luck getting any of the engineers on teams other than your own to share knowledge. As a result, everyone does things their own way and integrating the “platform” involves lots and lots of duck tape and prayer.

(Again I am only speaking for the department I worked at) - Since the job environment is stable, it's not uncommon to see those who are under-productive (or not see them because most of the time they're not in office). Even worse, there are some team leads who have been here long enough who think they are the authority of everything. A lot of additional team processes are added just to make these leads happy, and these processes can change from time to time depending on when they change their mind. - Esri has an annual review system in place, and it requires employees to set goals each year. But this is just the hardware! Changing job roles/team is extremely difficult even although you work really hard to prove yourself. Some managers set up regular meetings with individual team members (which is a good thing), but these conversation do not help unless you want to move to the direction that they want. Some conversations can even lead you to think it's your fault not doing a good enough job to earn the opportunity (I blamed it mostly on the lead/manager, not Esri). This is the main reason I chose to leave Esri. - Teams try to run software development process, but it's not uncommon to see big code changes/last minute check-in happening after code freeze. Sometimes changes can happen without team members being notified. This is a disrespect to the team but what's worse is the quality of the software can be hurt. Also, some teams do not value design and/or QA process. Some people just rush through software development and then hand over the software to QA who have no ideas how things are expected to work. - Esri has a very flat organizational structure --- this is a double-edged sword and doesn't necessarily lead you to opportunities to try out different things or pursue career passion. Having a flat structure means you might be pulled into the tasks you like or you hate. And because most people have the same title, you really have to learn the company's politics to know who to talk to to sort out different things. - When I started a few years ago, the entire orientation was a half-a-day activity which only covered the HR stuff, and I had little idea about how Esri's technologies work and how users use them. Given that Esri builds so many products, I really hope that the company has improved to give new employees a more detailed introduction on how things work together. - Many tech shops nowadays provide perks like free lunch, free snacks, beer, game room, massage sessions, even onsite barristers. Esri does have fancy coffee machines all over the campus, a gym room, and a free Christmas breakfast every year, and the company probably doesn't need these perks to attract the "GIS-geeks" to apply and join, but moving forward it's time to considering adding some of these to boost employees' happiness.