Necessary but insufficient - Senior Software Engineer Kessel Run Employee Review

3.0
1 Jan 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

* KR has redefined what's possible in the DOD with their cATO and deployment pipelines * Lots of misc perks, especially pre-covid with snazzy offices, kegs, ping-pong, etc. * For junior devs, you will get chances to frequently pair with senior devs and pickup skills. Unfortunately pay raises aren't great, so I've seen good junior devs leave after a couple years. I've also seen amazing senior devs leave, often not because of pay. * I've had a chance to work with smaller, more nimble SF factories that benefited from starting after KR and learning from KR's numerous mistakes (e.g. PCF, supporting too many languages/tools, growing too fast, etc.) - definitely check out the others (e.g. Space Camp)

Cons

* What you see *versus* what you get. The marketing, hype, tribe culture is strong. Everything looks great, but when you peel the onion there is surprisingly little substance/value. Almost $1 billion later and very little real-world operational value. The hardest part is knowing how little gets done and how much is spent. Case in point, every single week everyone is invited (and hundreds attend) a "wins" meeting to talk about all the amazing work done that week. This is probably a $40+k meeting. Maybe for some this helps the culture etc., but for me it's a distraction. Maybe bimonthly ftw ;) * Meetings. For an agile organization there are a lot of them. Multiple daily standups (which often run long), pre-IPM, IPM, retro, health checks, team fun time, sync & integration meetings, trainings, and professional development. On top of all that you're pair programming 100% of the time. It has been an rough 2+ years. * Transparency and communication with leadership is lacking. Poor decisions with no/minimal communication/conversations as far as which teams to standup, disband, staff-up/down, strategic technical priorities, etc. There are multiple teams that could go away with minimal consequences. KR often reinvents wheels in-house. * Tooling is a mixed bag - some are awesome (e.g. Macs, GitLab), some are terrible (e.g. Pivotal Tracker isn't even in the top 10 bug trackers). Also, welcome to MFA/authentication joys - I have 5 different apps/mechanisms to login to various KR services at this point (e.g. Okta & Duo & KRID (in-house) & Google Authenticator (w/5+ different codes) & username/password) - no SSO here! Even hitting nexus requires MFA (more slowdown) * After all the meetings it's also part of the culture to spend anywhere from 2-5x as much time writing, maintaining, and running tests than you get to spend writing new code. I spend 10-15% of my week pairing with someone writing new functionality. That's expensive and painfully slow progress when you have users that were engaged.

avatar
Kessel Run Response
5y
At Kessel Run we appreciate feedback as we continue to move into uncharted territory as the Air Force’s premiere Software Development and Acquisitions Unit. We pride ourselves on our diversity, team building, inclusion, and physiological safety. COVID-19 created obstacles for everyone; and in light of similar feedback we have made changes such as our no meeting days. Ideas over Rank is another tenant of our organization. If you see inefficiencies within the organization please feel free to voice your concern to your Program Manger, as we are adaptable to change, innovate and enhance our efficiency.

Explore other reviews about Kessel Run

5.0
19 Jan 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Flexibility, job security, technical freedom

Cons

Archaic C-suite, trailing behind industry standards

4.0
18 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great people to work with

Cons

Never followed through with Product commitments

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All