- If you're a new, impressionable engineer, looking for a job in robotics here, you're very likely to feel like you'll get fired any moment for the first few months. I've seen multiple people feel that way because there is absolutely NO MENTORSHIP. It is very natural to waste hundreds of hours of other engineers' time getting them to explain to you how some things are done which seemed avoidable if there was more guidance from the supervisors' side.
- You might want to look up the experience of your potential supervisors on LinkedIn - 98% of the combined work experience of managers and engineers here is at Vecna. This just helps perpetuate bad design patterns (when there *is* an attempt to design a system), and the same circle of ideas repeated brought up repeatedly.
- The work environment is setup to favor employees who have been here for a long time. (unless you look like their "type", but that's rare). Again, look at work history of anyone who works here and you'll see how many executives and senior employees have work xp outside the company, or managing a real team.
- The "recommended" way to solve a software problem according to senior management is for the junior engineer (!) to schedule a design meeting inviting the senior engineers and then debate the architecture of a system the new engineer thought up. Then someone else takes it up at some point and hacks it together. Finally when the project deadline is close everybody involved rushes in to save it.
- Most work is done by a handful of engineers who know enough to get stuff done, and yet are overworked till they quit or get fired - morale is a joke
- The benefits package does not even come close to offsetting the below market base pay
- Not a great place for women - don't generalize the experience of the exceptions
- Not a great place for a visa holder - plenty of horror stories to go around
- Multiple senior managers who were brought in to lead teams have quit because of the outright refusal of the executives to see the red flags we have
- The engineering team is a revolving door because of fixable issues
Some advice to employees, current or future, if you want to stay and grow here:
- Put in 12 hours a day but pretend you're only putting in 6.
- Maintain the shroud of secrecy (in the words of the CEO that gets repeated in every meeting - "Let's not be a *watercooler-talk* company")
- Go to the lunches/taco tuesday/socials every week and socialize with everyone like your job depended on it - because it does
- Your time here is purely transactional - DO NOT fall for promises of future role/team changes, promotions, visa - it will very likely not happen
- Push back on non-existing features that the sales team has promised the customers
