Glowforge reviews

Although we hire top talent, a lot of decisions are micromanaged. The entire org is very smart, including Dan and the senior executives, but they also tend to want to be involved in everything. This makes getting features out extremely slow and frustrating, and causes us engineers to redo a lot of work as well as ship incomplete features. After we ship, we never iterate. Been here two years, and after shipping units, I expected us to have a roadmap and direction. Instead it feels like we're just grabbing the next hottest and loudest thing. When we had a "Product overview" meeting, the first 30 minutes was filled with marketing and strategy, and we ran out of time to answer questions. We were promised a follow up, and it never happened.

- Highest stress level I've ever experienced at a job. - Everyone working very long hours to meet unrealistic internal deadlines that are constantly shifted further and further back. - Communication could be a lot more transparent. - Product potential is very unproven. There is a real risk that the whole thing may end up fizzling out after initial shipments are fulfilled, or that some unforeseen support issue becomes big enough to seriously affect the bottom line. - Deceptive marketing practices that oversell the product's capabilities and gloss over its limitations. - Seems to be a pattern in those who have left the company: Very few stick around long enough to vest any stock options at the one-year cliff. How convenient for Glowforge.