Donut Technologies Reviews

**note: this was a little bit ago and this could have changed by now** The culture is incredibly left leaning and progressive, to the point where anyone who is even just a “regular” progressive person would feel uncomfortable. I could not ever imagine a right leaning person working there (or even being hired) without being incredibly uncomfortable. Management would hire for diversity first, and skill second. And the diversity was basically them asking us to go reach out to our old co workers of color to poach them. There was nothing done in terms of hiring people from lesser known schools, companies, programs etc. It felt incredibly performative. And it felt like the employees of color were some sort of prize to hit numbers. The part I did not like the most was that two times a month there was a mandatory group meeting to talk about current-ish events and talking points. We were assigned an article to read and then had to discuss it in groups of 3. Some topics that were assigned were: the abortion laws, Black Lives Matter, and other incredibly sensitive topics. Imagine being a woman who has had an abortion, and then you are mandated to discuss with 2 other random employees about the new laws. Or imagine you are a person of color, and you get put in a group of 2 other non people of color to talk about a Black Lives Matter article. Every one of these meetings I attended was awkward, and everyone walked on eggshells trying not to say the wrong thing. A couple times, someone did say something another person disliked, and it became a whole “thing”. I am all for bettering ourselves through education, and discussing things, but making it mandatory and putting people in those situations is not right. And again it felt performative.

Working at an early-stage company is not for everyone. Things change quickly and the pace can be hard to keep up with if you're not used to this kind of environment. The systems and policies are good for a team at this stage, but it could feel unstructured if you're not used to early stage startup life. - Our team is super lean, and we do need to hire more people to be able to do all the things we want to accomplish (currently having to say no to a lot of things out of a need to prioritize) - There's always more work to do at a company of this size, so people need to advocate for their own balance. Especially working remotely, it can be hard to know when to "turn off," so I imagine this could be hard for people who haven't had this experience before (e.g. people earlier in their careers) - No office right now, which is great for some people but could be hard for others. - Technically a remote-first company, but the center of gravity is in NYC (though this is slowly changing with new hires across the country!) - There aren't necessarily clear growth paths since the company is so small and flat. People need to advocate for themselves with their managers (as in most businesses!) since there aren't pre-set levels & progressions in place for most roles.