Great place to start your career, but probably look elsewhere to grow
Pros
1. At least the team(s) that I was on, you really get to have hands-on experience with the technologies that you're consuming and using to develop software. Whereas some other companies may have many a blackbox that encapsulate a lot of the "magic" away, at Qualtrics you get to work on software engineering in its entirety - from designing the product/service to setting up the CICD pipelines to writing the code to building out the corresponding suite of unit/integration tests to configuring alerting/metrics. 2. Opportunity to work with highly intelligent and capable engineers some of which are thousands of miles away from you. This is especially true since I worked during 2020, but it's even more true when you realize that Qualtrics has engineering offices in the US, PL, and UK. It's amazing, and some of my best interactions were with individuals > 5000 miles away from me. 3. Stock options. While the pay is extremely mediocre, the stock options were really beneficial, especially given Quatrics' background (acquired by SAP then subsequently IPO).
Cons
1. Obvious variance in the performance of its engineering organization, especially as it applies to higher level engineers and managers. I am sure other companies have issues when it comes to performance evaluations but oh boy is this the case at Qualtrics. Most I know just work at Qualtrics long enough and surely you will be rewarded; certainly, this reflects a tenure to merit mentality that you will notice runs rampant throughout the company. Some L4/L5/L6's are getting paid wayyyyy too much for doing absolutely trivial/mediocre work. 2. Lack of focus at the management level. I am a bit surprised looking back at how disconnected my manager was from my team in terms of truly knowing what/how our product works and consequently what to focus on in subsequent quarters. 3. Tendency to hire in instead of incubating home grown talent. I've heard stories of some engineers being hired in as an L4, for example, and months later, an L5 is hired in even though the two worked at the same company before and started at the same time. Qualtrics, having an engineering office in Seattle, absolutely loves to hire in ex Microsoft/Amazon/Goldman Sachs since having a history with these companies somehow suggest that you're technically fit for a role at Qualtrics. 4. Lack of diversity. It's extremely difficult to attract talent to the Provo, UT office. The reputation of this state/location precedes it, which is why a non-trivial amount of employees come straight from BYU. Go cougars :D 5. In general, unqualified individuals in leadership positions. No elaboration needed on this.
