Confluent

Confluent, on the surface, is working with a lot of new and cool technologies. The brand still holds some value with outsiders, so if you're a mediocre engineer/PM who wants to get some great keywords and branding on a resume and then hop after 1-2 years, you could get a lot of value from being at Confluent.

The hiring bar has become very low here in the past year and is falling lower still, so if you want to hit the reset button on your resume, now is a great time to do it.

Aside from the opportunity for resume and personal skills development, I think there isn't a lot left at Confluent anymore. The comp is below market value, especially with the microscopic option grants these days. There aren't refreshers until your third year, and it's only 15% of your already tiny grant if joining in 2020. This company in particular loves to hire externally and almost never promotes from within, so make sure you are at the level you want to be during negotiations.

Emotional intelligence is basically nonexistent among the technical leadership, and they don't listen to ANYBODY whether it's their own people or the field teams. You'll have to be part of the good old boy's club to really enjoy working here, so carefully consider the demographics of the engineering leadership and whether that lines up with yours.

It's really a shame what's happened to Confluent, since I was here when things were still amazing. That culture is sadly no more, and engineering and product have really been struggling to deliver anything meaningful lately. A lot of the cornerstone talent either got forced out, left or in the process of leaving, or checked out, so engineering and product have hollowed out significantly. This has resulted in a "technology" company that delivers very little from a fundamentals perspective but is mostly carried by a large marketing budget and an above average field team, which can only stretch so far unfortunately, so there is starting to be trouble with the numbers. People in industry have been talking, since every conversation I have with recruiters these days starts with how they know about the issues this company has been having recently.

Having been here for so long, it breaks my heart to witness the implosion of something I believed in. But somewhere after all that initial success, the company lost its way. The leadership failed to show any gratitude for the culture and people that brought them there. This is a company whose heyday is long gone, but during that time I met a lot of good people among the old timers, some who turned into close, personal friends. That was probably the only reward I got for wasting so much time here, but I'll hold onto those relationships at my next role and beyond.