SolarCity reviews

Work life balance? Your kidding. SolarCity is a results driven company that needs to constantly push all depts. to achieve new levels of output in order to achieve our overall mission of thwarting climate change. The pay and equity shares are not commensurate unless you achieve a directorship or VP level -- so the compensation tends to be weighted towards the top - which is not typical of most high-tech startups where comp (particularly equity share) is more distributed even at the lowest levels of the company. There is opportunity to move up - lots of opportunity but a dual ladder typical of most high-tech companies does not seem to exist. To get ahead - you need to move into management. Pete spoke about creating a dual ladder for engineering but I don't believe this has really become reality through all functions. One other con -- is that ideas for improvement tend to be top down driven - not bottoms up like most high-tech companies. The C-Level Management is very good at SolarCity but innovation for solving problems or building a better product or service which usually comes from the bottom - but not so at SolarCity. SolarCity also hires lots of young energetic people who merely follow directions from the managers -- rather than think for themselves, so its often that thinking employees are not empowered to make decisions -- and usually need dept manager approval on everything. This will limit SolarCity's growth as we scale. Its also degrading for those people who can think for themselves. Its management by Direction - not MBO.

Extremely fast paced Requires a lot of autonomy Commission based