Snowflake’s current CEO may be a decent operator, but he’s a terrible leader. Employee well-being is not a priority. Entire departments are laid off with zero warning, leaving people blindsided and unsupported.
The company’s strong trajectory has nothing to do with him, the C-suite, or upper management. It’s the employees carrying the load, while leadership reaps the rewards. Since this CEO took over, the culture and ethics that made Snowflake special have disappeared.
Their so-called “unlimited PTO” is a trap. You’re capped at 4 weeks, which is designed so Snowflake doesn’t have to pay out unused vacation when you leave. Holidays that we’ve had for years are being stripped away because leadership decided U.S. holidays are “too excessive.”
Work-life balance is a joke. Management raises performance metrics endlessly, then compares you to peers working 60–80 hours a week. If you don’t match that, you’ll be penalized in reviews. This creates an environment where working 20–40 hours of overtime is the only way to “keep up.”
Meanwhile, upper management doesn’t care. They’ll retire as multi-millionaires regardless of the damage done. Employees are treated as expendable tools to maximize short-term profits.
This is not a good time to join Snowflake. Expect to be misled in interviews, overworked to exhaustion, and always under threat of sudden layoffs. The CEO is destroying what once made this company great, and it’s no longer a safe or stable place to build a career.
