Elastic

• Decent compensation and benefits.
• Shut it down days (although I think they are being rolled back).
• Interesting stack to work on.

For a company that has always been distributed, they do not do it well. There are fundamental communications problems. Perhaps if you get on the right team with a supportive manager and teammates, this would be different, but it was not my experience. It's an everyone-for-themselves environment, which makes it hard to integrate or feel welcome as a newcomer.

Weak onboarding has a lot of outdated or incorrect information in it. The same goes for offboarding; there are many holes in the process.

Hands-off leadership: I heard from my hiring manager on the first day and pretty much never again. The second manager was newer but was fairly hands-off, unsupportive, and did not want to facilitate team collaboration. Clear issues with project planning were highlighted to them, which they ignored. They also allowed arrogant, negative behaviors to occur in meetings.

Arrogant team members: Their source code would have you believe there are no stupid questions and that you should always ask, but when you do, they either repeat what you've said and make it look like you don't know what you're talking about or make you feel stupid for asking. I also had snippets of the source code recited to me in meetings like we were in a cult.

Unfortunately, the majority of those I encountered are working in silos, so project planning, requirements gathering, and decision-making are quite difficult.

Layoffs left a terrible atmosphere to work in and constant fear of losing the job (I left myself in the end as it was so bad). Coupled with this, they were still planning a Global All Hands in Orlando, FL, which seemed like a slap in the face to those laid off. I'm not sure if this went ahead, as there is conveniently no coverage of it on social media.

We were told on the company All Hands that Elastic had hired carefully and there would not be layoffs. Then a few weeks later, there were.

Tone-deaf team member had no sympathy for layoffs. They said, "Oh well, that's to be expected, and it's mostly recruiters." (It was not just recruiters, by the way; it was every team).

A lot of Slack over-sharing by some to make themselves look good. The same names kept popping up in this regard, always having something to say, but nearly always not related to the work at hand. There seemed to be clear favoritism for this type of person, and if you are not like that, it's harder to do well there.

Expenses: On top of all that, I returned my laptop promptly and filed shipping expenses, which they state will be reimbursed, but I've had about two months of back and forth trying to get my money back due to errors on their end. They have stopped responding to me now. It's a really bad look for this company, and I imagine others who have left recently are having similar issues.

Communication: The company needs to improve its communication systems, especially for a distributed team, to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that new hires are welcomed and integrated into the team.

Onboarding and offboarding: The company needs to update its onboarding and offboarding processes to ensure that they are accurate and up-to-date, making it easier for new hires to get up to speed quickly and for departing employees to leave without any loose ends.

Leadership: The company needs to improve its leadership by providing more hands-on support to its employees and facilitating team collaboration. Managers should be proactive in identifying and addressing project planning issues.

Team culture: The company needs to work on its team culture to ensure that arrogant team members are not allowed to create a negative atmosphere or discourage others from asking questions or sharing their ideas.

Collaboration: The company needs to work on breaking down silos and improving collaboration across teams to facilitate project planning, requirements gathering, and decision-making processes.

Transparency: The company needs to improve its transparency by being honest and upfront with employees about changes and issues affecting the company.