C3.ai

Systematic on-boarding into the company driven by Greenhouse.

Detailed Coursera-based class providing a good walk-through of the C3 AI suite and its capabilities. I had a rough idea of the C3 AI suite before joining the company, but with what I know now, I can safely say that I am singularly impressed by its power, and particularly its high extensibility. The core design at the root of the platform behind the AI suite is very modular and allows for piecing together technologies and creating complex applications in a very abstracted, extensible manner.

Helpful coworkers.

People are motivated and work hard. The folks high up the ladder in my org write code on a day-to-day basis (in most tech companies, employees in these roles are typically far removed from code) and are actively involved in development. Developers routinely work closely with them. There is no gate-keeping, and people up and down the org chart collaborate closely to get things done.

Good quality catered breakfast and lunch. Good coffee.

Excellent program for continuing education of employees. The CEO himself emails actively encouraging employees to utilize the program.

Free gym membership.

In Engineering, you will get to work with high-value, in-demand distributed computing technologies.

Pace is very fast. There is no scope for slacking or coasting. People in my team, especially the more senior ones, are very focused and work hard. During office hours, there is almost no waste of time. I have even seen digital fingerprints at ungodly hours from some folks. I am almost always very occupied and heads-down in my work, often trying to balance multiple priorities. I have enjoyed it, especially given the many learning opportunities, but this may not be for everyone.

Depending on the org and the team, things may get ad-hoc and appear unstructured at times. People will help, but there is no hand-holding or spoon-feeding. You will have to do due diligence to figure things out in a time-bound manner. There will be what some may construe as ambiguity or perhaps even what may appear as chaos. Some may see this as opportunities for learning and growing, while others may be apprehensive of it. As mentioned before, this may not be for everyone.

If you are tenacious, hard-working, curious, enjoy challenges and learning new things, if you like building something of high impact, if you want to work on high-value technologies, if you have the ability to sift through varied information and break down a problem into manageable pieces, you will fit right in and be successful.

No 401(k) matching.

Limited health insurance options, with no Kaiser (for California employees) and no HDHP.

The number of sick and vacation days per year is relatively lower than is typical in the Bay Area for tech companies.