May 30, 2023
Lack of general focus but nice work culture
Anonymous employee
balena reviews
3.9
67% would recommend to a friend
60% positive business outlook
balena has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 41 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The balena employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).
Reviews by job title
41 reviews
4.0
May 18, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
* Recent leadership change * Re-focusing on core product * Getting control of the financials * Remote only
Cons
If one was to glance over previous (negative) reviews, a common theme would become apparent - balena suffered from a toxic management culture. Except, balena is a bit weird and there are no managers here. So how come the toxicity? The answer is "founderitis". Founder's syndrome (also founderitis) is the difficulty faced by organizations, and in particular young companies such as start-ups, where one or more founders maintain disproportionate power and influence following the effective initial establishment of the organization, leading to a wide range of problems. You can read more about it on Wikipedia. So basically, until the beginning on 2023, balena was unable to grow up from its nine year long start-up phase due to being lead by the wrong type of people - people, who have been instrumental at getting it and the associated technology off the ground, but not great at making it grow into an actual successful business. From now on, balena is led by a team of people who recognise, that to become a successful business, we need to stay focused, ensure we are solvent and by doing all the other things that create a positive place to work. We should also be aware of our blindspots, being a technology company - not all problems can be fixed with technology.
5.0
May 18, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
- Work on what you love with room to explore your (relevant) interests (albeit within the company's best interests) - Culture is highly understanding, cooperative, and supportive - Employees respect each other - Management respects employees and recognizes their efforts - Employees' personal time is respected - Freedom to choose your own schedule - Management is open/non-secretive
Cons
- The remote environment makes it possible to get siloed, but the siloing could be avoided with a little effort to communicate with others and join meetings/open offices - It may take a bit to complete a feature/improvement (pending reviews, etc.) because everyone else also has their hands full with other features/improvements. Plus potential re-iterations provoked by reviews and other changes of product (a consequence of the long lifecycle of a PR). However, this is something that is actively being improved, with the company mindset recently having moved towards trying to get polished features out sooner in order to get feedback and iterate on them. - Have to do support shifts which (although beneficial for learning about the product) can be a bit tedious/boring at times
Viewing 10 - 12 of 41 Reviews
