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Politics Over Progress, Executives Don't Care

Senior Software Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at Splunk for 4 years
November 8, 2017
San Francisco, California
1.0
Doesn't RecommendPositive OutlookDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros

Has a large market share and won't go away any time soon.

Cons

Management is clueless about actual people management. Talking and grandstanding is valued over actually getting things done. Every meeting is a chance for people to put on a show and play politics.

A typical meeting is about three-plus managers/directors talking about what work needs to be done and one (if lucky, two) engineer who will actually do the work. Politics at the manager level is brutal, where everyone is fighting for headcount, and managers try to quietly poach top performers (even though they aren't supposed to). Teams dislike each other and think they are the only ones overworked while everyone else is lazy or incompetent.

Executives are dishonest about what is going on. They claim they want to attract world-class talent, yet average compensation has been going down year after year. They claim Splunk is an engineering/products company, but look at the actual investments (public financial statements) in R&D/engineering versus sales/marketing.

They claim we are doing well and finances are great, yet perks and amenities are going away (reduction in health insurance benefits, can't even order enough food on free lunch Mondays for everyone, soda machines broken for months, minimum years required for new laptops increasing). The executives don't care at all about the engineers. To executives, engineers are just a bunch of replaceable geeks, cogs in the machine.

The best description of this place and its culture is Microsoft under Steve Ballmer.

Advice to Management

Do some basic research about what makes engineers productive.

Don't repeat the mistakes other companies have made.

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