Databricks

• Work with really great people in general, though it can be team-dependent.
• Work with near the bleeding-edge technology, or at least get to use it and be in that realm.
• Pretty decent tools.
• Reasonably transparent.
• Pay has been competitive, though it is a function of private valuation and only recently have I personally had any liquidity.

• Work-life balance can be not so great.
• The core product is mostly fine, but a lot of the newer stuff is just not ready, not well integrated, and takes a lot of effort to get right for someone in this role.
• It seems like we say that we’re fast to react, but there are several 2+ year decisions made on premises that ended up false. However, we refuse to throw in the towel and shift directions on some of them, which I’ve mostly chalked up to executive ego/unwillingness to be wrong, but could be sunk cost fallacy.
• No 401k matching or ESPP.
• With the latest private round, it seems like there is definitely a lot less generosity in refreshers.
• Low-liquidity equity most of the time I’ve been here, though supposedly that will change. It feels like private rounds are leaving money on the table when Palantir has a $290B market cap. The risk of decelerating growth is pretty big, both from a law of large numbers and current economic uncertainty perspective.

Listen to your customers sometimes.