Cloudera

Cloudera has excellent work/life balance. The product is awesome, and almost everything is open source. Big data is used to stop fraud, save lives, and generate billions of dollars of value in the world – it is definitely a "make the world a better place" type job.

After the merger between CLDR and HWX, things are not going well. Politics are everywhere, legacy Clouderans are fleeing in droves, Wall Street has no clue what Cloudera is really worth, and compared to just a year ago, it is very difficult to trust upper management has a handle on things.

After leaving, people are not getting backfilled quickly enough, leading to serious resourcing problems. This creates a negative feedback loop and more people leaving. Also, no, you cannot move all of those roles to Budapest or India; that is not the same thing.

Career growth is difficult unless you are an absolute rockstar that rises above everyone around you.

Under-investment in infrastructure and tooling.

Acts like a company 1/4 their size or less, very weak on cross-company tools or processes.

Hasn't yet figured out how to coordinate across GEOs in different time zones effectively.

When I joined Cloudera in 2016, it seemed awesome. Even after the IPO landed us at a stock price about half what we sorta expected, we were all optimistic about the long-term prospects. After the merger, that is gone.

1. Go back in time and don't throw Tom Reilly under the bus; we all loved him, and the only mistake he ever made was pushing for this merger to begin with.
2. Also, try to keep Mike Olson, Amr Amadallah, Hilary Mason, Charles Zedlewski, and so many others. The sheer number of high-level folks leaving is terrifying, even if the only thing you know about them is their title and how long they were at the company before bailing.
3. You have a serious culture problem, and it came from legacy Hortonworks middle management. Time to talk to the people on the ground, figure out where the problem is, and excise it, quickly.
4. You keep saying "we have to just hang in there and execute" - DUH, obviously, but who is going to stick around and do that when their stock loses half of its value, you close the office they were at doubling their commute, and your stock re-ups are embarrassingly low, making it trivial to find better comp almost anywhere else in the valley?
5. People need a way to get career growth. I saw people promoted from within all the time, but I could never figure out how to do that myself. Mentoring and career growth opportunities need to be more structured and easier.