Samsara

Has some deep flaws, but generally a rewarding place to work with lots of potential.

• Extremely strong pipeline and product-market fit. Samsara no doubt has a very bright future and is still in hypergrowth in terms of customer base and increasing annual business almost exponentially.
• The product is generally top-of-the-line with very interesting problems to solve, and Samsara has been good at identifying new investment areas to grow the business.
• Amazing individual contributors on the engineering team. ICs are generally very helpful, smart, and caring people to work with.
• Solid and fast-paced career growth for junior ICs (SWE II-IV and Senior I).
• A lot of improvements have been made to the career pathing framework, including more transparency about leveling expectations/durations and having manager calibrations to make junior IC promotions more standardized/fair. Less clear for senior engineers, though.
• Middle and upper management seem like they have been more receptive to feedback in the last 6 months, although the R&D org still has some deep management flaws.
• The CEO seems very humble and is clearly well-informed and personable. Not sure how that translates into actual leadership, though.

Generally unimpressed with engineering/product middle management (e.g., director level/VP level).

Also, engineering VPs and CTOs are MIA to the lower levels.

R&D reorgs literally every quarter lead to a general sense of inefficiency, disorder, and lack of confidence that middle management can make up its mind and know what it's doing. Yes, we are adapting quickly as we learn more about the market, but the number of reorgs and product/management turnover is excessive. It's pretty common to have 3-4 different managers within the first 1.5 years of working here; that can't be efficient.

Middle management is very upwards-facing. Historically, they care more about delivering and showing execs flashy new features without substance, rather than doubling down and investing time into tech debt, making sure core functionality is reliable, and improving IC well-being.

This is getting better overall though, after several implosions with products failing to deliver core advertised functionality (that led to huge burnout and attrition).

An IC's overall experience and happiness is almost entirely team-based. Engineering managers can make or break your experience. What does this say about what middle managers are doing to lead and manage R&D culture?

Benefits could be better, especially accounting for all the new expenses employees are incurring after the prolonged WFH.

There's no makeup for lost transportation benefits, catered food, etc.

The layoff in 2020 is obviously a source of unhappiness, but also the lack of transparency around how those decisions were made.

Apparently, engineering managers/directors weren't consulted, and productivity "metrics" weren't used either. Some part of this must not be true because they definitely didn't pick people at random.

Continue to focus on investing in core functionality rather than flashy, unused, incomplete features that looked good on Figma.

Product and leadership need to define better mission statements and goals for each team rather than jumping from one flashy thing to another. Also, maybe take more time to develop next-gen hardware that does what it's intended to. It's not a good sign when the dev team hears about a new device version and jokes that it won't solve any new problems.

Invest more in the health and happiness of ICs, which also comes as a byproduct of having focused teams that are organized and feel productive. Investment in core functionality ensures that emergencies and burnouts are less common.

ICs don't really feel cared for by middle and upper management. Management chases dollars over employee happiness with not much balance.