SharkNinja reviews

2.7

31% would recommend to a friend

(666 total reviews)
avatar

Mark Barrocas

38% approve of CEO

49% positive business outlook

SharkNinja has an employee rating of 2.7 out of 5 stars, based on 666 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The SharkNinja employee rating is 22% below average for employers within the Manufacturing industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

666 reviews
1.0
Mar 29, 2019

The Negative Reviews Are True

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

salary is above average, china travel is business class (for now), the office in Needham is nice, your coworkers *usually* are nice hours can be somewhat flexible if you have the right manager The September - November months are dead because The Marks still don't know what they want for next year. The 401k match is wonderful The healthcare is insanely good

Cons

Where to begin. Wow. First of all - the currently employed positive reviews read like they are from the HR and recruitment departments. Which are totally separated from "where the donuts are made" by a giant wall: on one side: HR, Legal, accounting, recruitment... basically administrative jobs that run the company. On the other side of that big wall? Pure product development hell on earth. If you have ever worked anywhere else besides SharkNinja developing product, you understand that there is a right way to do things. When you then work at SharkNinja, you witness the Wrong Way, which is in itself quite amusing... and even educational. Launching product at SharkNinja allows you to witness how to fail in such amazingly huge ways that you get to witness why quality systems are useful. You get to learn why effective program management is necessary. And you also understand the importance of working with talented individuals who excel at what they do. There are talented people at this company- but people with real world experience outside of the usage of Microsoft Powerpoint and Greenshot/SnapIt and Microsoft Outlook is extremely rare. In Needham, there may be at any given time 3-5 people actually designing and engineering product. The majority of this is done in the China office, off-site, by the real development team who is burdened with the insane deadlines and pressures involved with them. "Engineers" and "Managers" in Needham are effectively Project Managers- they can massage and point the China team in the direction they want them to move, but ultimately it is the China Team's call, and they often don't need Needham interference. The culture here is rotten to it's core. It is built around the all-important Executive Review, which is often held 2-3 times a week. Needham employees goals are to present powerpoint presentations to The Marks and inform them on program progress- whether it is real or manufactured. Often is it manufactured results because the people who say Yes To The Marks are the ones who get promoted. The people who inform them of reality often get frozen in their positions, and eventually removed from Executive Reviews. If someone holds a VP title or above at SharkNinja, they have either become a Yes Man (there are no Yes Women at SharkNinja (VPs)... for misogynistic reasons) or you were hired into that role and in order to hold onto that role, you must conform. The VPs who retain their role understand how to beat their team into delivering. The VPs who do not abuse their teams toward success will eventually be outed from the company, with no vacation pay-outs (VPs get "infinite" vacation so that the company does not have to cut them a check when they are forced out). Engineering teams are insanely green- most of the engineers at SN are fresh out of school- they have no industry experience, and don't know any other job outside of SN- which is important for their retention. Travel here is extensive. 20-25% travel for any product development facing job is a lie- you will go to China a minimum of 3 times a year for 2+ week stints. 5-7 trips is average. Some people do much more (and get promoted eventually to directors for their sacrifice). You will be on the phone at 7am-9am and 8pm-10pm with China 2-3 times a week. Product development timelines are 8 months from concept to launch. This is for simple products like blenders to complex products like robots. Development scope creep happens at all times of this development cycle. Shouting and swearing in Executive Reviews is believed to decrease tooling times and software validation. If you are on the product development facing part of the company (non administrative): If you drink casually, you will turn into an alcoholic. If you have a family, you will grow more distant from them due to the extensive travel. If you value your work, and invest yourself in the product you are developing, you will develop anxiety during the development cycle. And you will develop depression when it is either canceled due to failure, or launched as a semi-dangerous and questionable product. "Career advancement" is a real thing here- if you can sell your soul to the company. But as someone who has worked at non-disfunctional organizations, title and position at SN does not translate to other orgs with real executive structure, real quality systems, software departments (SN has no software engineering), etc. Executive positions here are earned through being a man and by gaining Mark's endearment. But other companies don't know this so you can effectively grow your title and fake your way through an interview and possibly gain a job at a sane organization where you are severely underqualified. In summary: unless you owe a gambling debt, or bought too much of a house for your family, or you have demons in your mind or skeletons in your closet and you want to lose yourself to a job that will consume your soul entirely, the money and "position" you are offered is too good to be true. Walk away. Don't do it. Read the other negative reviews and understand that they are real. And that these fantasmical stories of The Marks and how horrendous the work life balance here is (and the product engineering) are in fact true. This place is comically bad. And if you do care about your work, and your performance, it will erode you. It will also ultimately erode your skillsets- because you will use none of them for work. You will become a powerpoint ninja. If sewing a bluetooth earpiece to your ear is attractive, or getting shouted at in executive reviews by white men about what is essentially a household appliance that will be built and sold for 1 year and never impact the planet in a good way, or becoming an alcoholic and earning yourself a divorce is appealing, SharkNinja is for you.

1.0
Jun 6, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

PEOPLE are amazing. I've worked at better companies but no where with better people. It's kind of like an orphanage or prison where you kind of bond over the misery, and that misery makes for great team building. PERKS, oh there is nothing like a massage in the middle of a crazy day. Also the breakfasts are on point! I was nearly in a food coma every Friday. In addition the overwhelming stress turned me onto mediation. Onsite every Friday. Highly recommend it! PAY, bonuses and salary are competitive for the area...if you ignore the fact that you're working 50% more than other jobs.

Cons

The toilets are trigger happy, very much like the company. The following is light hearted but do not mistake for being exaggerated. It's a "If you don't laugh you'll cry" kind of thing. You start your day, you know what you need to "do" and you how to do it but then BAM, you get blasted. This spine numbing shock happens about every 2-3 hours at your desk. It could be anyone running up with the following...(I recommend saying it aloud but all in one breath. It is a more accurate experience ) "Mark said the project is dead unless...", "thanks for staying late but we actually removed ... BUT one random person said... and the project is dead unless we have it, no matter cost" "the cost is out of control and it will die unless it is defeatured" "drop that, we found some china magic and hustled some poor china company. We shook on it. The cost is fine." I never misuse the word literally, this literally has happened multiple times over the course of less than 72 hours. Phoenix? Zombie? Both? Seriously, some people are happy there. I'd say 5-10% of talented people with options are HAPPY. I genuinely recommend this company if you are 1 of 2 people, DOer or a YES MAN. It is very exciting to have an idea and receive zero resistance. That is the culture. Try everything! There are healthier and more efficient ways to have that culture but it is the spirit of Sharkninja. It is a DOers dream. However I would not recommend it for DOers that have worked in professionally managed engineering organizations or plan to gain traditional engineering best practice for your resume. YES MEN, or WOMEN run the place. If you don't say yes to The Marks then you are going nowhere. However you do say yes you will receive countless, meaningless promotions. Senior = 2 years experience. Manager = 0 direct reports. Director = 3 reports VP = YES ;) Nothing happens below VP level and that is probably why there are a dozen of them. We'd have 20 people in a room all agree on a direction we spent weeks preparing for and the next morning the exact opposite was the direction from the VPs, no debate. We all would openly say to each other quite hopelessly "I feel strongly about this but you know I have no control over it." No one was empowered to make any decisions. I saw a lot talent go wasted and it was hard to watch. I worked countless hours in the beginning because I took pride in my work. It was a huge hit to my personal life and marriage. My Director told me not to take management so seriously. I took his advice and that helped a lot but that was when I knew it wasn't a good fit. I want to learn, grow, and be challenged by visionaries not ignore YES MEN. The people were great. I tried to make it work. The company was really accommodating and tried to make it work for me but in the end I left on good terms with plenty of notice. HR didn't even do an exit interview. They know why people leave. You'll read the reviews. You'll ignore them like everyone does BUT when you sit on that toilet and get blasted you'll know, you'll know! Pro tip : Toilet paper over the sensor. Game changer!

1.0
Nov 21, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Nice building, free parking, good onsite gym, lots of smart people who have also been suckered into working there

Cons

Unclear expectations and lack of process leads to ridiculous schedules, horrible management and no help from HR for employee onboarding or training in any way. Sharkninja is by far the worst place I've ever worked. I took an engineering management job there with the highest of hopes, despite reading dozens of horrible reviews on Glassdoor. I bought into the lines from the HR team during the recruiting process ("we're changing the culture", "you're going to be part of the change", etc.) and decided to give it a shot because I heard they were going to invest in some innovative new IoT-connected products. Big mistake. The President (Mark B) and CEO (Mark R) conduct weekly or even sometimes daily product review sessions with the entire team for a particular product. The team is tasked wth creating a giant PowerPoint deck and sharing the current status of every details with "the Marks" who spend their time rolling their eyes in disgust or whispering to each other before lambasting the employee, no matter what level, tenure or role the person has in the company. I've seen then rip apart an employee who had been on the job for 4 days but was thrust into giving the Mark & Mark update. The guy didn't even know where the bathroom was yet. These product review sessions are often rescheduled multiple times due to the Mark & Mark schedule, so you have 20,30 or 40 people sitting around (sometimes for hours at a time) waiting for the meeting. It's a horrendously inefficient use of very expensive people's time. There is NO training. None. Everyone is too busy to help you get adjusted to the job or company and you are expected to just know what to do. Being a smart person who'd done the job before, sometimes you can find your way through but then again, the Marks might think you should be doing something completely different. So any work you are doing might be completely for naught. Many people work there and have zero job descriptions and have no feedback from their management chain - so you just work on what you THINK is important and then wait to get ripped apart in some Mark & Mark review session. Sharkninja pretends that they are "agile". While they move at a very rapid pace, it is mostly due to the petulant pendulum changes due to the whim of the Marks. They decide they don't like the shape of a part on a vacuum and all of a sudden, the whole team is redesigning it, trying to change machining on factories in China, etc. This wastes time, resources, money and burns out the Engineering and Quality teams. In truth, the company rarely writes anything down in the way a professional product development company would - so the concept of agile is really just that - a concept but no one there really understands agile & scrum so it's just lip service. Sharkninja was bought last Fall by a Chinese Private Equity firm. Any hope of it becoming a fun, rewarding place to work went out the window when that transaction was signed. I am sure there are aggressive earn-outs for Mark and Mark - thus they are driving the company to just deliver more and more product with less resources. From a market opportunity perspective, the company is lagging others in both the vacuum and kitchen markets. Shark released a robot vac last year and it is not even listed in any reviews anymore - so basically that market is now iRobot only (with a small slice for Neato). Shark has no innovative products coming down the Pike. They are a copy-cat org and the reality is that there are plenty of Asian copycat product companies that do it better than Sharkninja at half the price. If you're desperate for a job, go ahead and join but get yourself a rock-solid contract ahead of time - one with a strong severance plan if/when Mark & Mark decide they don't like you. If you have any other options, take them and laugh when you read another 100 horrible employee reviews on SharkNinja.

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Glassdoor has 876 SharkNinja reviews submitted anonymously by SharkNinja employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if SharkNinja is right for you.