Abridge

The mission is admirable and the tech is still pretty good. There are still pockets of employees who have their heart in the right place. Pay is reasonable depending where you live. Shiv is a great CEO who is able to push the vision.

Abridge used to have a really great culture across the company but, unfortunately, that culture is rapidly shifting. What used to be an excellent environment to foster collaboration on engineering problems has turned into silo'd teams that dole out solutions to the org.

There have been some really poor leadership hires that initiated the downfall and snowballed into some teams being a shell of their former selves. You'll probably hear about "world class tech" but that's no longer the case. The company is struggling daily with poor technical decisions made by leadership who has no business making them. The latest round of leadership hires only has an interest in their own ideas without understanding any of the history that came before them. They're bringing in their chosen super senior engineers that know better than everyone else. Very much becoming a company of have and have-nots.

I don't blame the executive leadership, they are trying to navigate an exceedingly difficult market with startups nipping at heels and major players in the healthcare industry cutting significantly into the customer base. However, the hires that have been made, especially on the technical side, aren't cutting it and will only precipitate an even more steep downturn.

Quality hiring has been hampered by the requirement that teams hire in San Francisco and New York (to be fair, this has been on and off through my tenure). With the intense pressure to add head count quickly, this has led to the hiring of many below average engineers that would otherwise have not been hired.

Seriously rethink the recent technical leadership hires and perform a deep evaluation of engineering management across the board.

While there are still employees who can help you solve some of these tough technical challenges and foster an inclusive, healthy culture, the ability to retain those employees is fleeting with every passing day.

Rethink your position on remote workers as you're leaving out the ability to hire better quality employees.