Pure Storage

Fairly good pay, though less than FAANG companies at equivalent engineering levels.

New grads can generally get help when they need it. Some new grad peers have grown very fast, took on senior engineering responsibilities quickly, and have been recognized for it.

Engineering productivity has been on the upswing, though it is far from perfect. Many engineers have been able to take the PTO they think they need.

C-suite executives are very engaged in improving diversity and inclusion.

Flashblade product and sales teams like to make customer commitments that engineering teams struggle to meet. Repeatedly, in the interest of pushing out features, teams have made design decisions that force engineers to either invest too much time in keeping their systems operational or in using those systems to complete their work. As a result, engineers (particularly in infrastructure-type roles) tend to spend a lot of time handling interrupts instead of working on their own projects. Work-life balance and morale tend to suffer when interrupt load spikes.

Teams are not always assigning interesting work to new grads. To be fair, some new grads have owned features that they have designed and implemented. However, there are occasions when a new grad or early-career engineer spends most of their time paying down technical debt or triaging test failures instead of owning a longer-term project. Management is aware and acknowledges the detrimental career consequences, but they ultimately box these engineers into their roles until some milestone is reached.

Some projects that I have designed features within are pretty poorly designed. These projects were often created by engineers that have left the company. I usually resorted to workarounds instead of changing the overarching project design. Again, because I needed to ship the feature.

Engineer attrition has also been increasing in 2021, though I've heard many companies encounter similar pains.

Some engineers have had trouble taking time off. They have ended up with a lot of weeknight and weekend work due to a customer escalation or deadline. Interviewees should press about the bounds of the "unlimited" time off policy.

Diversity and inclusion could be better among rank-and-file engineers.

Put more focus on the maintainability of the products that get released, and try not to overcommit to customers.