Evolving IoT Startup with Self-Management Approach
Pros
Balena is a love-or-hate situation, as a backend developer I am more on the love side. A lot has changed since the previous CEO stepped down, company seems much more down to earth on what needs to be done, which is very positive. The engineering team overall is amazing, really brilliant people and good amount of the stack is Open Source True remote work. The company really works async and has a very well-developed system to keep things rolling remotely, the only times you have to do "sync" work are support shifts where you will be scheduled only if you don't have scheduled leave and with 10 days notice.
Cons
You have to be willing to take a lead and really, find what you want to do/can contribute to. No one will come to you and tell you "do this things, due this date", only very few people in Balena will get such direct requests, which can be a bit frustrating as people that have already a lot of work only get more work and at the same time you have some people trying to figure it out how to get work assigned to them and learn without consuming the time of those people that are already loaded with work. Diversity and Inclusion is a a hard hit, we are indeed very good at hiring people from all over the planet however, we can do better in creating a more diverse team.
