Opower reviews

For a tech company in SF Bay area, the benefits are way below par (assuming they exist) - specially for a start-up/ young public company - No free food (except crappy Friday lunches), no full health insurance coverage, no 401k match, no Employee Stock Purchase Program. Really stingy, even after being public - and there is a difference between being thrifty and stingy. Examples: Company boasts of free chair massages - but for 160+ people in SF office, they have 1 masseuse come in 2 days a week. The way they manage is by initially asking you to book a 10 min slot only once in 2 weeks, and as office grows - they ask you to book only once in 3 weeks. Just get more masseuse - and solve the problem. They refill the most popular snack - ice cream once a month, so it only lasts 3-5 days - and the company very proudly boasts of these benefits. Lot of talk from HR dept - but no actionable work - management agrees there is a 401k match issue - but wont do anything about it. I feel HR dept doesn't really have monetary resources to match up other SF bay area tech companies, but they never even acknowledge it and keep the broken record "We want to be best" running. Very poor compensation, no bonus structure, not well defined promotion plan One of the worst employee review system I've seen which changes every 6-9 months.

Managers don't seem to actually be interested in managing nor do they seem to have an incentive to manage people well and help their reports grow. While there are some obviously good managers, collectively, they are ineffective There are apparently plans to help managers become better, but...there is essentially zero training or support for professional development for anyone else. Career opportunities are very limited and what it actually takes to advance is always in flux and poorly communicated (see inexperienced managers above). If you are not getting promoted, compensation increases are very stingy. There is very in the way of overarching strategy. Every team (almost anyway you cut them) has a different strategy and there is enormous work to get even little things done. This provides a lot of "autonomy" but we collectively have a hard time getting anything through the entire system without heroics. When there are actually major decisions made in senior management, there is a huge amount of whiplash as the reprocussions filter down to the rest of the organization.