Unfortunately despite some bright spots there were too many unacceptable cons working at balena which left me no choice but to my submit my resignation in under one year.
Balena has a flat hierarchical management structure which means the two or three people running the day to day operations of the entire company often have zero experience and competency with what they are managing. The flat structure also means there is no chance of upward mobility in the company.
Verbosity is rampant and encouraged at balena and it takes an inordinate amount of time for the verbose employees to make their point during meetings, emails and communications. Often times context is never provided. An example would be if a co-worker is explaining an operational issue, a task, a goal or even a story and begins from the middle. Making matters worse was the fact they were only interested in "what" went right or wrong while omitting the "who", "where", "when" and "why" factors of communication. These are basic common sense practices and it was never followed at balena and I found it quite astonishing. In my time at balena they could never grasp what they were doing right and build on and what they were doing wrong so they could improve on.
Balena continues to use flowdock instead of slack even though the latter is universally perceived to be more efficient.
The company structure is so rigid, stubborn, maladroit and lacking imagination that they are incapable and/or unwilling to look for suitable replacements for the raspberry Pi and other critical components which have been unobtainium for over a year now with no realistic projected receival date from the manufacturers.
The balena Athens request that I willfully generate inaccurate invoices to US customs was the catalyst for my resignation.
I was told the Milan office is being closed because it was "unproductive" and the jobs of those team members would slowly be phased out. There were two problems when I heard this. In my experience the Milan team was super talented and got most of the work done while doing most of the heavy lifting for balena so to speak. Secondly, it was quite self-serving to hear that from an Athens team member; projecting ones insecurities and shortcomings onto others is what came to my mind when I was told this.
There are some good devs working at balena however their time is often occupied by producing vaporware that will never make it to market let alone make the company money in the long run.
Working at balena you should expect contradictions daily with a hefty dose of duplicity. Just check out there job postings. In one paragraph they will say a candidate needs to " handle ambiguity " and then in the very next paragraph they preach "radical candor" and "excellent communication skills".
Salary was below average for the industry.
Staff turnover is extremely high.
These are my experiences and opinions about my time working at balena.
