While transparency is one of the company's "Leadership Principles" it is often only exhibited at a higher, company-wide level. Lower level decisions were often made with employees told last minute. I often felt out of the loop as far as the path Engineering was taking.
Management in Engineering often exhibits knee-jerk reactions. Be prepared to be pulled off of a project mid-quarter, or put into a "Code Yellow" which forces the entire team to work on a single issue, even when only certain people of that team have the skills necessary to work on that issue. Decisions made by management are often emotionally or historically based, so have data ready to back you up in these situations.
This goes along with the fast growth of the company, but be prepared to change teams. I was personally on three different teams in 2 years at Qualtrics. Also, deadlines are often imposed on certain teams or projects but these deadlines are often not communicated to other teams through management.
The high-bar for hiring is definitely an important part of what makes your coworkers great, but sometimes amazing candidates were not considered simply because their GPA was not high enough or they didn't have a degree. If you're not a buddy with someone in upper management, you likely won't get hired if your GPA is lower than a 3.6 or you didn't graduate from college. Several amazing, heavily experienced people were turned away solely based on these figures. These can be useful metrics but are not the sole indicator of someone's success. The hiring process in general is not transparent and also hurts current employees who are stretched thin as it is and could really use more people on their team.
In my case, even after two years as a part-timer at Qualtrics, I was told I would not be hired on full-time based mostly on my GPA. Even worse, Qualtrics waited until the very same day I graduated from college to notify me of this. In the end Qualtrics can decide who they want to hire or not, but at least have the decency to do so in a timely manner.
Management is often disconnected from the day-to-day goings on of the company. Even team level managers are often kept too busy to be able to fulfill their management duties at the team level.
There are bi-annual performance reviews which can be extremely helpful in receiving feedback from your peers and your manager. However, this is often the only feedback you receive. Managers are supposed to meet individually with each employee at least once a month but these were often cancelled because we were simply too busy. Feedback every six months is not truly actionable and processes need to be put in place to enforce more regular opportunities for feedback.
