Roku

Reasonable work-life balance. Have some very good/intelligent peers to work with.

Roku really used to be a nice company to work for. There used to be recognition for your work, and people knew each other well and appreciated others, etc.

Nowadays, it's been more and more top-down culture with too many layers from the top down. New hires are often useless but occupy important roles.

The management (VPs and SVPs) are keen on introducing more and more (Dir & Sr. Dir) management levels rather than developing long-term, existing team members who have given everything for the company. Not sure if the top management knows and/or even cares about people anymore.

There is literally no regard for quality but only focused on cutting costs and time.

Salary hikes are non-existent and promotions are next to impossible at IC/manager levels. However, people take care of each other at higher positions.

Seen people go without any salary increases for up to 4 years. Most of the times, the reason for no increase in pay is due to the increase in stock price/valuation. What they don't realize is that some people take risks to join a company (pre-IPO) and their risk might have been rewarded now, but you can't keep pointing that as an excuse for not giving salary increases.

I can keep on going about this but will stop here about salary. Performance increases/promotions at IC level is very rare (except a junior engineer can easily become a senior engineer, and it stops right there). Becoming a principal engineer is so difficult (I know someone in the company for more than 7+ years and is very intelligent but hasn't been made Principal). Similar cases with managers getting promoted to Senior may be easier compared to getting to the next level (Director).

Management would rather hire someone with lesser experience from outside and make them a Director or VP above you rather than promoting from within.

I know of a lot of loyal, long-time people who are frustrated and whose voices haven't been heard at all. Most of them are putting up with it simply because they love their work or their team. Also, the pandemic situation made it difficult to look elsewhere. I am pretty sure when things settle down, there will be a mass exodus.

Stock refresh does happen every year; it becomes less and less relevant. It is 50% less than what you used to get, and it is also box-car style, making it not useful at all.

There is obviously no bonus, no 401k, no ESPP, and not any other incentives like other companies might have.

Take a deep look at the management structure and see if those many layers are really required. We used to get work done without these many layers and can get it done going forward as well.

Trim the fat and reward the long-standing employees.

HR is literally not useful for anything but paperwork. VPs and above have a lot of decision-making power and who gets what (promotions, salary, hire/fire decisions, etc.). There is no budget given to managers or middle management. Everything is decided at the VP level.

Unless something is really done about the org structure and salary, you will wake up one day and see a lot of talented people gone before you realize it.