TORC Robotics reviews

Deadline-driven work with all of the overhead of agile. Daily standup, retros, sprints, etc., but an absolute refusal to seriously plan anything beyond the quarter. But your plans for the quarter had better be accurate or the CTO is going to yell at you. The CTO is ex-Amazon, brought in his own staff, surrounds himself with people that are not involved with implementation, and dictates timelines with zero regard to team capacity. Team feedback on the tasks is no longer permitted. The goals aren't achievable, and there is no mitigation planning. For anyone consider joining: They are holding retirement accounts hostage now to try to fix their retention issues. Last I recall I think it's two years for their 401k contributions to vest. Even with positive intent, you're needing to chain yourself to Torc, but the cynic in me wonders if it's a cost saving measure for the inevitable collapse - will the organization even exist in two years, and if not then I guess your retirement contributions just evaporate.

- Executive/Senior Leadership is poor and inexperience; the relocation/addition of offices, acquisition that has been largely disassembled, and etc. - inappropriate talent acquistion/development/attrition strategy; cutting bottom 5% should be the norm but done with dignity and not a surprise - funding - still a R&D project no matter what the VPs and above are trying to spin for the investors; natural resistance to a product development lifecycle. - investors in the self driving space are expecting metrics that exceeds the industy leader to earn their attention and commitment; no one is going to invest in a company without a non-replicable competitive advantage - talent strategy is to avoid hiring in places where the talent is in abundance due to cost; top talent requires top compensation, USA is a capitalistic society and no one is going to work for less to exchange for stability unless you are the clear industry leader. - used to be a dual class employment scheme, where a significant portion of the employees are not subjected to company OKRs and get FULL bonus pay regardless their performance; should be better now though - lack of accountability and over-emphasis on work life balance; marathon or sprint, you still need to make positive progress.